


How Long the Night

by CaptainHoney



Series: How Long the Night [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Body Horror, Brainwashing, Domestic, F/M, History, I had to google way too much weird stuff for this, M/M, Medical Horror, Medical Torture, Minor Steve Rogers/Natasha Romanov, POV Alternating, Propaganda, Recovery, Sex Work, Steve Rogers as the Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers has a cybernetic eye, Surgery, Torture, Twentieth Century, Violence, bad and then good and then bad and then ok, both winter soldier, content warnings for everything, dark themes, identity sharing, implied steve/peggy - Freeform, original character friends - Freeform, small moments of fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-25
Updated: 2016-12-05
Packaged: 2018-09-02 01:18:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 5
Words: 33,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8645563
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CaptainHoney/pseuds/CaptainHoney
Summary: "It happens in a matter of seconds: rivets popping from their holes, Bucky’s scream, Steve’s feet slipping. He attempts to save himself, clinging to the side of the train. Self-hatred sears white-hot as he watches Bucky disappear. Then there’s a scream of metal tearing and giving away and there’s nothing left to hold on to, nothing but empty air and a receding train and a rush of wind so cold and long that he blacks out.***It does not know how long it was kept in the tank. When it is woken it is somewhere new, but the same: same machines, same faces. It has one name – designation: Winter Soldier – and two faces, light and dark, sun and moon, the Eye and the Arm. "Steve and Bucky both fall from the train and are remade. For the long decades they hurt, and they run, and they kill, and they find each other.





	1. Prologue: Unbecoming

**Author's Note:**

> Hello friends! Please let me know if there are any specific content warnings/triggers you would like before reading this work. Please be warned that this prologue contains graphic body horror/medical torture/surgery. It's legit gross but if you read the tags for this fic then it's skippable. I'll give specific warnings at the start of each part/chapter. 
> 
> Enjoy!

_Bucky picks up the shield, and for a few moments he finally knows what it would be like to crawl inside Steve’s skin. He feels_ good _, like maybe he’s not just the ugly black thing that Zola trapped inside him. He forgets the experiments for the first time since he’d been rescued, is able to get outside his own head,  but then it all goes wrong, he’s blasted out into the cold air and he can’t hold on and Steve can’t reach him and as he falls he knows he will die_.

It happens in a matter of seconds: rivets popping from their holes, Bucky’s scream, Steve’s feet slipping. He attempts to save himself, clinging to the side of the train. Self-hatred sears white-hot as he watches Bucky disappear. Then there’s a scream of metal tearing and giving away and there’s nothing left to hold on to, nothing but empty air and a receding train and a rush of wind so cold and long that he blacks out.

Steve wakes, regrets, tries to move but it’s like his body has been remade again in raw flesh and razor wire. He looks for Bucky, calling his name, screaming himself hoarse, spotting his body just as the echoes of his calls send snow and rocks plummeting down on them from above.

_He wakes to the sensation of being dragged but mostly to the sensation of pain. He chooses oblivion_.

He wakes to bright lights and strange voices, to cold steel and to pain, to pain, to pain.

_A doctor talks slowly, halting English with a thick Russian accent. He grabs Bucky by the chin, forcing his head sideways to look at the blackening stump of his own arm_. _‘Pinned at the elbow, nerves crushed, cut you out, such a hassle, dead flesh, cut it away.’_ _The blade of the bone saw is as thin as his thumbnail and as the doctor starts to hack at him he decides to forget this memory, even before they apply the electrodes to his brain_.

He is blind in his right eye, a dull, hot throb of blackness that they prod at until it’s sharp. With a hook and a scalpel they scrape out the remains of his eyeball, passing his optic nerve back and forth. He can feel it tugging at his eye socket and screams against the gag. A doctor hushes him, stroking his hair with his left hand and holding half his iris with the right.

_They flay his shoulder in strips. With knives and hooks they strip back his muscles, exposing the bone. He tries to stay conscious but he can’t. He tries to die, but he can’t. They drill holes in his clavicle, his scapula, his cervical vertebrae. They tell him he is doing very well. They screw hooks into the holes, thread wires through the hooks, solder the wires to a gearbox. They have underestimated the weight of the metal. They drill bigger holes, attach bigger hooks, weld metal directly to bone. He smells his own flesh as it bubbles and burns. They tell him he should be thankful, that he is stronger now than ever before. Stronger than any man. He is almost relieved; maybe that means he is no longer a man_.

He calls out Bucky’s name when he wakes. Something cold and hard throbs in his ruined eye socket. A woman is unwrapping gauze from around his head. She barely glances up. The gauze comes away and shaky red images appear in his right eye. She shines a torch in his face, flicking it back and forth, testing responses. He knows this routine, from doctor’s offices with his ma and health tests for the enlistment office. He follows the light. It burns red in his red eye. The takes the torch away and he tries to blink, but there are no eyelids on the right side of his face. The world stays red, grainy and glitch and shaky and red.

He – _they_ – are always full of needles and tubes. Leather straps cinch across the chest, at wrist and throat and ankle. There is metal where once there was flesh. Attempts are made to sass and spit and yell. Electrical currents are applied to the skull, armpits, chest, groin, soles of the feet. Attempts are made to bite. Blood is drawn. They are made to wear a muzzle. Electrical currents are applied to the brain. Wrist restraints are broken and bones are broken and a battering ram is driven into the abdomen. Electrical current is applied to the brain. It complies.


	2. Part One: Katabasis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warnings in this chapter for violence, amateur medical procedures, violence toward children, brief scene of sexual assault. Also bad eating habits.
> 
> I apologise to anyone who speaks/reads Russian for the google translate.

_LOCATION UNKNOWN, 1945_

It is shown a picture of a woman. It is asked furious questions. The laboratory is being packed up. When it has answered the questions it will be put in the ice for transport. It remembers the woman. It does not want to answer. Another agent takes the photo. This agent gloats, tells it that the woman is dead. It shakes its head, tries to break free. It is jabbed in the throat with a cattle prod. It cannot speak; the handlers argue. The woman has crashed an important plane into the Arctic. They are packing up in order to run. It cries. It does not go willingly under the ice.

***

_DATE AND LOCATION UNKNOWN_

It does not know how long it was kept in the tank. When it is woken it is somewhere new, but the same: same machines, same faces. It has one name – _designation: Winter Soldier_ – and two faces, light and dark, sun and moon, the Eye and the Arm. It sees its other face across the room and it stirs into motion. It is not bound; it walks on shaky feet, two mirror halves moving closer. It makes it a few steps before it is shoved backwards to the chair. Other faces block its view of itself, shining lights in its eyes and making notes, taking blood and making notes, testing its reflexes and making notes. It calls out a name, tasting rusted letters on its tongue, and hears a name back as an echo. _Steve! Bucky?_   They apply electrodes to its brain.

***

It has been here a long time. They take its blood, pumping until it falls unconscious. They pump the blood directly into other bodies, a group of KGB volunteers. They are already so strong, so perfect. It no longer remembers how to hope but there is still a part of it that _wants_ , and that part wants them to fail. The first three volunteers die screaming, ripping the skin from their bodies in great sheets. The surface of their flayed bodies bubbles, their blood boiling inside them. It is pleased in a distant, detached sort of way.

The next round of volunteers produce better results. The scientists find that having a stationary period between removing its blood and injecting the blood into a new host mitigates some of the more deadly effects. It trains with these new volunteers, the ones with its blood flowing through them. They are so strong and the scientists want to create so many. It hits them over and over and over again. It tries to find their weaknesses. It rips out their throats with its metal hand and is applauded by a group of generals on inspection. They look at it with lust in their cold eyes.

***

_LOCATION UNKNOWN, DATE ESTIMATION 1948-1949_

It is given a new designation – Captain Crimson – and placed in front of a camera. A row of straight-backed volunteers stand behind it, a banner bearing a hammer and sickle flying above them. A shield is strapped to its arm. There is a sheet of neatly typed lines attached to the back of the shield. There are hot lights overhead and clusters of top military brass scattered behind the camera. It remembers: a group of children waving American flags; a chorus line, red white and blue; a sea of khaki, miserable faces and mud-covered boots, booing. A handsome man in a pristine uniform steps forward and punches it in the gut. It doubles over, confused, as the man shouts. The man slaps its cheeks, not hard enough to leave marks that will show on film, and it straightens, adopts a pose, gets ready to read its lines.

_Fellow Americans, what you see is no trick. I am Steve Rogers and I have seen the glory of Stalin’s vision. Behold, Stalin’s New Man!_

_(Gesture to recruits, recruits perform drills)_

_Glory to science! Glory to labour! Glory to the Soviet regime!_

They make it repeat the scene until they are satisfied and after the camera stops rolling it repeats the lines again and again and again: _Fellow Americans, I am Steve Rogers_. Then they apply the electrodes and put it back into the tank and it forgets its lines until the next time.

***

It has not been fed. The hunger provides an edge, the sting of desperation. It is ruthless, efficient. It takes out three, four targets in a matter of seconds and is back in the van before anyone notices a thing. It is not rewarded. It goes back under the ice with its stomach empty.

***

_COPENHAGEN, DATE ESTIMATION MID-LATE 1950s_

It is on a mission. It has been told to enter a hotel room and kill everyone in it. Predicted targets: six. Projected mission completion time: 1.25 minutes. It enters the hotel room. Seven targets sighted. Targets one through four dispatched in 6.4 seconds. Target number five lunges, fails to connect: dispatched. Target six has gun. Target six is-

‘Steve?’

It stops for a fraction of a second and she shoots it in the left hip. It falls, looks up, into the barrel of her pistol. Her nails are red against the pearl grip, like blood on snow. It looks past the gun, to her. It knows her face.

‘Agent Carter.’ Her steely expression crumples for the briefest of seconds. ‘Status: killed in plane crash, 1945.’

‘It seems your information is out of date, Captain.’ Her face is hard again. ‘But I can’t have you letting your comrades know I’m still alive.’

It swats the gun away. She takes a step backwards, feints, and dives under the table. It fires after her, splinters flying. It stalks the room, walking over bodies, hunting. There is a whimper from behind the settee and it vaults over the table and lands badly on its injured leg. It whips around, semiautomatic raised, and prepares to dispatch the target behind the settee. The target is not the woman. A shot is fired and it drops its weapon, blood rapidly soaking its glove.

‘Haven’t you caused enough trouble?’ she motions to the other target, who scrabbles behind her. It takes a limping step forward and she aims the gun directly between its eyes. ‘I hope you know I take no pleasure in this. Well, maybe a little.’

It leaps forward as she fires, knocking her off balance. The bullet grazes its neck. It crashes into her and they fall backwards but she rolls, is up and across the room, and the other target is racing to the door. It assesses, can’t seem to help but follow her, ducks as she swings a chair at its head, it pulls a knife, they break through the French doors onto the balcony, she twists under his arm and hooks her leg under his ankle and-

‘We were supposed to go dancing,’ she says softly and it remembers at the same time she yanks her leg and it – he – is falling, crashing through the railing to the street below.

He lands on the roof of an Oldsmobile, shattering the glass. Her face peers at him from above for the briefest of moments then disappears.

‘Peggy,’ he croaks with vocal cords that have done little more than scream in over a decade. Memories rush at him, overwhelm him. He rolls off the car, boots crunching on broken glass. With a running leap he launches himself at a second floor balcony, swinging himself upwards. He zigzags his way back up to the room, only to find it empty. Peggy and the other target have both vanished.

He picks up his gun from where it lies on the bloody carpet and runs into the hallway. There’s a scream; two maids, fleeing down the right hand side of the corridor, overturning their trolley. Steve hooks left, gun raised, looking for an open door. A stairwell appears and he hesitates, listening: two sets of footsteps, heading down. He vaults over the rail, leaping from landing to landing. Their head start is too great and they reach the ground floor and he is running after them, bursting out of the stairwell into the hotel lobby. She fires at him over her shoulder, shielding the other target as they run, but her shots go wide.

‘Peggy!’ he calls, and he wants to lower his weapon, but _denied: against mission imperative. Shoot to kill_.

People are running, screaming, skidding across the polished floor and getting in their way. Peggy is almost at the doors so he fires, bullet pinging off the burnished gold handle. She dives sideways, dragging the other target with her. They press themselves behind a pillar and he stalks towards them with long, slow strides. She fires at him again from behind the pillar, hitting his kneecap. He goes down. He has lost a lot of blood, can’t seem to find his feet, is failing the mission. He reaches out to her as she steps cautiously out from behind the pillar, gun aimed directly between his eyes.

‘Please,’ he says, voice barely above a whisper and she looks confused, that wrinkle between her brow suddenly so familiar and he wants to smooth it out, to kiss away her confusion, ‘help me.’

Then the other target lobs something towards him and there is a flash and a bang and a high-pitched ringing and blackness, and when he comes to he is surrounded by agents. He tries to fight his way out but he is too weak and sluggish and they electrocute him, sticking a cattle prod in his guts over and over. Then he’s back in the chair and screaming Peggy’s name and Bucky’s name and his name, and they’re forcing the bit between his teeth and applying the electrodes to his head over and over and over again until it feels nothing at all and they carry it to the tank where it is suspended in the woolly grey fog of pain and forgetting forever.

***

_RURAL CUBA, DATE ESTIMATION EARLY 1960s_

It is outside a village, looking down a scope at a single-room schoolhouse. A head is perfectly framed in the window, glowing in the afternoon sun. Outside the schoolhouse, a politician is having their photo taken. The politician turns, extends an arm, and it fires. The head in the window explodes. There is screaming. The politician clutches their bleeding hand. There is chaos. It melts back into the forest.

***

_DATE AND LOCATION UNKNOWN_

It is sparring with a group of recruits, raised from birth to fight for the glory of the cause. They treat it with fear and reverence and it responds with violence and disgust. There are five of them, competing for a prize. If they win they will be given a transfusion of its blood, a newer, stronger generation. The agents and handler talk: an American scientist called Howard Stark has used early samples of its blood to create new super-soldiers, but they are still ahead in the arms race. It is fighting a group of children and they are already stronger and more deadly than any American weapon it has yet faced.   
  
‘Наталия!’ A man is yelling at one of the children from the side of the room. ‘прекратить сдерживая!’

Her eyes flick to him for the briefest of moments and it shoots out its metal hand, grabbing for her throat, but its fingers close around air. She is suddenly behind it, using its forward momentum, kicking the centre of its back. Before it can recover she grabs the arm of another child and swings the girl into it and they crash to the floor.   
  
‘ты слаб!’ the man yells and the girl bristles. She dodges the punch of another girl, grabs her, snaps her neck. It mirrors her and soon they are dancing together over tiny fallen bodies, an ornate choreography of violence.  
  
‘достаточно,’ the man says softly, and immediately she stands to attention. It slinks obediently to the corner, where its own handler permits it a drink of water.

‘What do you think of her?’ the handler asks it.

‘Question unclear.’ Its voice feels corroded with disuse. ‘Define parameters.’  
  
‘Христос, forget I asked.’ The handler rolls her eyes. ‘At least they give these kids personalities.’

The girl comes over, proffers her hand. Her handler has clearly given her some kind of instruction. It stares at her hand blankly. Sighing heavily, its handler grabs its wrist and slots its hand into the child’s. The girl pumps their hands up and down and smiles prettily.

‘It was a pleasure to work with you.’ She performs for it, a coy pantomime in which she tucks a stray strand of red hair behind her ear, dropping her eyes, blushing slightly. ‘I really learned a lot.’

It stands perfectly still, unblinking, until she drops her smile and her face relaxes into an expression as empty as its own.

‘Do a little dance for us, Romanova,’ its handler drawls, making a twirling motion with its finger. She rises obediently onto her toes, spinning in a dizzying succession of circles. Its handler laughs mockingly, exchanging cold looks with the girl’s handler. ‘What pretty little soldiers you’ve made, Comrade Petrovitch.’

‘There are those who think your toys would benefit from Comrade Chelintsov’s knowledge,’ the man replies, crooking a finger at the girl. She stops twirling and falls obediently into place at his side. ‘Especially after the events of Copenhagen.’

She glares daggers at him. ‘Copenhagen was an isolated incident, no one could have anticipated Carter’s-‘

‘Of course, comrade,’ he says, raising his hands placatingly. ‘The Winter Soldier Program is, of course, a great asset.’

‘That’s right.’ She slaps it on the shoulder proudly.

‘Such a pity that you could not succeed in having the two of them work together.’ He shakes his head. ‘They make such a nice set.’

‘We do not know for certain. The assessment of the risk-‘

‘Of course, of course. Though as I say, Chelintsov’s methods may be of use.’ He places an arm paternally around the girl’s shoulders. ‘Did you enjoy your ballet lesson, Natasha?’

‘Yes, Ivan, very much.’ She smiles up at him like a favourite daughter, wiping blood off her cheek with the back of her hand. ‘I’m almost ready for the advanced class.’

‘We shall see.’

It is marched from the room and to the lift and deep down underground, to the room with the chair and the tank. A door has been left open and it can see through into an identical room with an identical chair and the tank where the rest of it sleeps, eye a sharp red light cutting through the frost on the glass. It moves a few steps towards itself before it is redirected to the chair.

‘You let yourself get beaten up by a bunch of little girls!’ the handler yells, shoving its chest. It falls back into the chair and the handler stares at it in disgust. ‘Pathetic. You’re practically an antique.’

She secures the straps at its wrists and ankles, almost tight enough to cut off circulation, but not quite. The strap on its metal arm gets stuck on a gear and she swears, crouching down to wrestle leather from metal.  ‘How did I get stuck babysitting this куча барахла?’

It lacks proper sensation in its metal arm but her hand is pressing down on its palm and it closes its fingers gently. It tilts its head to the side, examining the image: flesh held in metal, a strange perversion of intimacy. She freezes and stares at it, fear in her eyes.

‘Let go,’ she says, voice quavering. It grips tighter, trying to feel something.

She hisses as though in pain and fumbles for the prod at her belt. She whacks it across the temple and it lets go. She hits it again, and again, until the side of its face is running with blood, then she turns the prod on and jabs it directly in the centre of its metal palm. The arm goes haywire, twitching savagely. Smoke rises from it and it can smell burning flesh. The arm goes completely limp and she stands back, cradling the hand it held against her chest. Her fingers are mangled, red rapidly turning black.

‘I’m sorry,’ it says through teeth clenched against the pain. ‘I’m sorry.’

She laughs bitterly. ‘You don’t even know what that means.’

‘I’m sorry,’ it repeats.

‘Save it.’ She throws the cattle prod to the ground and it rolls away, clanking across the tiled floor. ‘They’ll terminate me for fucking up your arm like that. Then they’ll zap your pretty little head and you won’t remember a damn thing about it.’

They make it shoot her then they pull off its metal arm, enthusing about the chance for upgrades.

***

_CENTRAL UNITED STATES, DATE ESTIMATION LATE 1960s_

It is on a U.S. army base, setting a timer on a small bomb in the kitchens. The kitchens are attached to the mess and the mess is due to fill at precisely 0500. It is tasked with make the bomb look like an accident, a gas leak ignited by an open flame. It is easy work, as easy as getting onto the base and moving around without being detected. Security on the base is extremely high, but not high enough to catch a ghost.

It is still close enough to the base when the explosion occurs that it feels the shockwave.

***

Many miles away, its other half has just blown up a Stark Industries laboratory, where Howard Stark has been working to strengthen the super soldier formula.

Outside the Stark Industries building, it is not hiding. News crews which had begun gathering for a scheduled press conference from Howard Stark begin rolling as soon as the first explosion shakes the building. They capture with cinematic clarity the moment it strides through the doors, flames licking its back. It strides down the steps as the building collapses in on itself, the same swagger from those early propaganda reels still evident.

‘Listen to me, Howard Stark,’ it says, speaking directly to the camera, accent thickly Russian, ‘you’ve been using my blood to create your perverted army for too long. Send your inferior American soldiers after me if you must, but I will not let you corrupt more innocents with my blood any longer.’

It spits its rehearsed lines into the camera for several minutes, until the scream of the sirens are louder even than the flames. It sprints into the back of a nearby van which peels away, doors slamming shut behind it.

***

It is expected at the rendezvous point at 1100. It is trekking through oak forest, wearing an ushanka and a wool-lined corduroy jacket over its tactical uniform, rifle strapped to its back. The hat and jacket are both a soft blue. It finds itself removing its gloves to stroke the corduroy and run its fingers through the wool. It plucks at the velvety cords of the jacket, digging at the ridges with its fingernails. It is pleasant to have these forms of sensation. It rubs its hand over a tree trunk, brushes its fingers over leaves. It crouches, digging its fingers into the rotting leaf matter and feeling the wriggle of tiny insect life.

There is the sound of footsteps to its left and it crouches into a defensive stance. A couple emerge from the trees, rifles slung over their shoulders.

‘Howdy,’ the woman says, waving.

‘You hunting these parts?’ the man follows.

‘Hello,’ it says stiffly. Its hand is in its coat, two knives held between its first three fingers.

‘We’ve been hoping to find deer, but something’s scared them all off.’ The woman is smiling but she is also staring. ‘Say, you feel that shock earlier?’

‘No,’ it says. The couple exchange looks.

‘You even hunting, pal?’ the man asks. ‘You’re not trapping, are you?’

‘No.’ It grips the knives a little tighter. ‘Just out for a walk.’

‘You one of those survivalist types?’ she narrows her eyes. ‘You got one of them secret bunkers out here?’

‘Now, Marlene, we shouldn’t ask our friend here too many questions.’ The man laughs, clapping her on the back. ‘Man’s got a right to do what he likes. It’s a free country, after all.’

It smiles, an uncomfortable sensation. ‘Funny.’

‘You alright, pal? Looks like you’re in pain,’ the man says, concerned. ‘You haven’t been eating any berries, have you? It’s not the right season.’

‘Sure,’ it says, walking backwards away from the couple, ‘bad berries.’

‘Make sure you bury your shit, love!’ the woman calls after him. ‘Poor dear.’

It breaks into a sprint as soon as they’re out of earshot. It maintains the pace for a mile, and is at the rendezvous point ahead of schedule. The place is a fork in a dirt road, forest on one side and field on the other. It leans against the wooden fence that separates the field from the road, watching black and white cows grazing in the distance. It remembers the woman Marlene’s words and for a few moments it contemplates finding ‘one of those survivalist types’ and killing them and living in their bunker, hidden away from the world. Then it hears the rumble of a van in the distance and it’s too late.

It finds its other face when the van doors open, covered in ash and soot. It feels suddenly whole. The agents are extremely tense, all guns trained on it. It sits side by side with itself, face and body slack as they secure it to the seat. As they drive in silence to the pickup point the agents slowly relax and lower their weapons. The road is bumpy and its shoulders jostle until eventually it’s easier to lean together, supporting its own weight. Its hands are chained to the seat but its hands are close enough together that they brush up against each other. As the agents fall into casual conversation it tries an experiment, hooking one pinkie around another pinkie. It keeps its faces blank but inside that sense of contentment is strong, a pleasant warmth, radiating from its linked fingers. It is almost, almost like holding hands.

***

_DATE AND LOCATION UNKNOWN_

It is on the submarine and it is fighting, savage, dirty fighting with bare knuckles already bloody. A ring of agents cheer it on as it lashes savagely at its own face, striking again and again. If it strikes with enough force it can reduce itself to a bloody smear on the ground and it will be nothing so it keeps going and it lets this happen and it lies there and it punches and eventually, casually, an agent steps in with a prod and shocks it in the ribs and it falls back, twitching. It lies on the ground, feeling the ends of its broken jaw bones grating together and wonders how long it would take for its metal arm to punch through the submarine’s hull and kill them all and if they would be able to stop it if it really, really tried.

They leave it alone on twin gurneys after they patch up its face and its fists. The pair left on guard have not been with the organisation long and they tell stories and play cards in the hallway. It listens to them for a while, shivering against the cold of the metal gurney. It turns and sees itself, not the Eye but the Arm, reflected in the steel. Its features are distorted, misshapen by violence. They have wired its jaw shut while the bones reset. Its bodies throb with pain.

‘I tried to kill you,’ it says to its dark reflection. Unable to speak, it nods.

A red light appears above its reflection and it turns to find the Eye, the one it likes, staring at its bandaged hands. The Arm reaches out, cups its face, slides its hands downwards. Its fingers wrap around the Eye’s throat, and the Eye mirrors, and dark eyes look questioningly into blue and red. _Self-destructive actions constitute non-compliance. Refusal to comply will result in punishment. Non-compliance may result in termination of one or both assets. Termination: (un)desirable?_

It drops its metal hand and places it over the flesh hand at its throat. The grip tightens, then relaxes. Flesh fingers entwine with metal. This is the closest its two halves have been and it doesn’t know what to do or how to be so it is still, hands linked, until someone comes through the door and it is forced apart.

***

_MOSCOW, DATE ESTIMATION 1970_

It is at a party, watching the graduates from the Red Room. It is watching for signs of weakness, always at the ready to destroy friends as well as enemies. The Arm lurks on the edge of the room while the Eye moves among the guests. Painted banners hang from the vaulted ceiling, unfurled to a few feet above the guests’ heads. The banners are painted with portraits of the graduates in motion, their leotard-clad bodies an impressionistic blur of pirouettes and arabesques. The Romanova girl’s hangs at the front of the ballroom, her red hair streaking across the blue-black of the background. She is there, moving through the throng, with her handler Ivan Petrovitch never far behind. She moves stiffly and beneath her eye makeup there are dark shadows, but no one else seems to notice. It dances with her. The onlookers are delighted to think of their two prize jewels together in the one set. She feels tiny and fragile in its arms and it knows to most she looks like just a child. It tightens its grip on her waist and then it can feel the knives she has hidden beneath her pretty chiffon dress. She smiles sweetly and it twitches its mouth upwards in response.

‘I’ve met your friend in the shadows,’ she says in a voice that is playing with the sultry breathiness of an older woman. ‘You’re a handsome pair.’

‘Thank you.’ It spins her out and back to a smattering of applause.

‘You’re not really a real person, are you?’ she smiles a half-smile, like they’re sharing secrets.

‘I like your dress,’ it says, one of several previously approved lines it was given for the evening.

‘It’s ok,’ she says, resting her head on its chest. ‘I’m not a real person either.’

***

_DATE AND LOCATION UNKNOWN_

Construction is happening on the base. Power has to be rerouted from the tanks so it is kept awake. They keep the Arm and the Eye separated, occupying one with weapons training and the other with officials who are visiting to oversee the construction. It performs the physical tasks with detached precision. It follows orders, lets its body be used. The body is just a shell. It is just a thing.

There is an accident; a wall collapses. A small landslide occurs, snow and rubble rumbling into the base. Several agents are killed. Plastic sheeting is tacked over the gap, a temporary measure.

They punish it, even though it had nothing to do with the accident. One of the visiting officials will lose money. They use its body with violence. It whimpers, cries out. The official gurgles and something hot and wet splashes its back. It turns and the Arm is there, covered in blood, and the official drops to the floor, throat a gaping red smile.

It kills the agents guarding the broken wall. It works quickly, tearing down the plastic sheeting and clearing a path through the rock and snow. Then it is outside, and it is together, and it runs with its hands together and the blood freezes on its skin. It makes it three and a half miles before the cold becomes overwhelming and it can no longer move.

It prepares to slit its own throat. The Arm and the Eye each take a weapon. It presses its bare, blood-slicked chests together, an arm around each waist and a knife at each throat. It makes small cuts, not rushing, and the blood flows sluggishly in the cold.

A HYDRA agent emerges from the snow and shoots it both with a tranquiliser. More agents swarm over it, stop its bleeding, bundle it onto snowmobiles and take it back to the base. It is too weak to stop them.

It is given a couple of days to recover from the blood loss and then it is punished. It is made to rebuild the wall. Four of its toes between its two bodies are frostbitten, and are removed slowly and without anaesthetic. It is beaten, and shocked, and restrained and made to watch while each body is abused. Then the electrodes are applied to its brain and it is put in the tanks and it’s like none of it ever happened.

***

_NORTHERN UNITED STATES, 1972_

The agents are arguing over a news report on the car radio.

‘- _enth of April, and will prohibit the stockpiling and development of biological weapons. There is limited information at this stage over how extensive the Convention’s limits will be on super soldier programs, and what will become of the brave men and women who_ -‘

‘We’re fucked if they all sign,’ an agent says, throwing her hands in the air, ‘and I don’t know how they can’t see that!’

‘That’s not for us to question, товарищ,’ another agent replies, shaking his head. ‘If the brass didn’t want this thing to happen, don’t you think they would’ve stopped it by now?’

‘And what do you think will happen when they order us to destroy all our biological weapons, hm?’ She gestures to it and it stares impassively straight ahead. ‘We’re really just going to take these freaks out back and shoot them? Are they going to start doing their own dirty work, then?’

‘America isn’t going to authorise the killing of U.S. citizens. There’ll be some kind of…’ he pauses, searching for words.

‘What, robot killer rehab?’ she snorts. ‘Yeah, sure.’

‘Something will be put in place.’ He runs a hand through his tight curls and laughs. ‘Besides, HYDRA isn’t a country, and this thing’ – he hooks a thumb at it – ‘doesn’t technically exist. We don’t have to sign shit.’

‘And what about the other one? Pretty sure the world knows about him.’

‘The Stark Industries bombing is why they’re having this whole charade. Captain Crimson’s little press conference made a lot of people uncomfortable.’ He digs his fingers painfully into its thigh. ‘Even if they have to put him down, we’ll be able to keep this one.’

It grips the edge of the seat, mind whirling. They’re going to put it down. It can’t let them. It had made an agreement: termination would come at its own hands only. It will not allow _them_ to destroy it.

‘Calm down, soldier, we’ll be back in the action soon enough.’ The agent grips its upper arm; it’s shaking, making its chains rattle.

It lurches sideways, driving the hard dome of its skull into the agent’s face. There’s a crunch and blood explodes over its scalp. _My hair_ , it thinks distractedly, then it rips its metal arm upwards, sending handcuff links scattering through the van. The agents are yelling, the van is skidding towards an embankment, it still has one hand cuffed. It rips out the bar, swinging it toward the drivers’ seat. Before it can strike they hit the bank and the van rolls once, twice, stops.

It busts its way through a window, not stopping to check if the agents are still breathing. Outside the vehicle it makes a rapid assessment of damage. It was still cuffed to the metal bar when it crashed, which speared itself into a seat, wrenching its arm backwards. Its wrist is fractured and its elbow is dislocated. It reaches through the passenger side window with its metal arm, retrieving a gun from the glove compartment. The agent tries to stop him but she is upside down and pinned. Maintaining steady eye contact, it leans into the cabin and takes the prod from her belt. She reaches for her walkie talkie and it switches the prod on, holding it a few inches from her throat. They stare at each other for a few tense moments, then she lets her hand drop. It disappears.

***

It has no idea where it is.

The van crashed next to a- school? There’s a high, wire fence with a field marked out in white paint behind it, and a cluster of buildings behind that. Across the road is another field, this one full of corn. It’s twilight, and it can see the lights of a mid-size town half a mile up the road.

Headlights appear over the rise and it bolts into the corn. It sprints in as straight a line as it can manage as the sky turns from dusky purple to inky black.

 _What the hell kind of a goddamned plan was this?_ It thinks in a detached internal voice. _No kind of goddamned fucking plan, that’s what. Should have remained in vehicle, formulated tactical response. Current location not a tactical advantage. Current location: ??? Data: unknown. Next move: ???_

It runs headfirst into a scarecrow.

It jumps backwards, swinging the gun upwards. In the half-light of the moon the scarecrow looks like a nightmare. It stands frozen, gun pointed at the straw-stuffed head, heart pounding. Mission data flashes before its eyes: a hot, sticky day, a village, a sack dressed as a sniper. A city street, a legless mannequin, a garrotte, the back seat of a CIA agent’s car. Plaster faces in the window of Abraham & Strauss ( _error: data source: ??? mission: ???_ ).

The scarecrow remains motionless. It holsters the gun. Considering for a few moments, it yanks the pole out of the ground and the scarecrow crashes into the corn. It pulls off its tactical vest awkwardly, injured arm _flopping around like a useless shit of a thing_. It tries not to look down at its own body; it dislikes seeing the evidence of its career. It removes the pole that forms the scarecrow’s arms and, planting one end of the ground and holding the other firmly, stomps on it until it breaks into roughly even lengths. It shoves the scarecrow’s floppy hat between its teeth and grabs its useless arm and yanks it down and up, resetting the elbow with a jerk. It rips shreds from the tactical vest and uses them to tie a splint for its wrist with the pieces of pole. Then it shrugs into the scarecrow’s jacket: thick, waterproof, lots of pockets. Military. There’s a set of dog tags around the scarecrow’s neck so it takes them too. _Weird fuckin’ tribute to your dead kid, Farmer Joe_ , it thinks in that weird, detached voice. It puts the remains of the tactical vest back on the scarecrow and sticks it back up again. It salutes with its metal arm and jogs off into the corn.

It keeps a steady pace until the sky begins to lighten again and it’s coming up on the outskirts of another town. As soon as it slows to a walk it realises that it is experiencing extreme hunger and exhaustion. _Sub-optimal_. It staggers into town and finds an alley across the road from a diner to lean in until the place opens.

As soon as it sees the diner sign flipped from ‘closed’ to ‘open’ it walks across the road and slips inside. A bell tinkles pleasantly as the door opens and shuts. It slides down into a corner booth and almost falls asleep right there just from being able to sit down.

‘Hey, pal. You a vet?’ a man asks and it’s suddenly alert. ‘Alright, buddy, didn’t mean to startle you.’

The man is about forty, a pristine white apron tied over his slight paunch. _Predicted threat level: minimal_. He’s holding a pot of coffee. It swallows and licks its lips, staring at the coffee pot. _Liquids required. Possible dehydration: sub-optimal_.

‘Veterans eat for free in my diner, so you think real hard about what you’re after. Looks like you haven’t had a good meal in a while.’ He flips a cup that sits on the table, pours the coffee, looks at it with narrowed eyes. ‘Course, you also look like a hippy. You’re not one of them dirty hippies in a stolen coat, are you?’

‘I am definitely not one of those,’ it says, voice scratchy. _Data point: hippy. Meaning: ??? unknown_.

‘Yeah, sorry about that. Had a gang of ‘em through here a couple of months back. Those kids got no respect.’ He shakes his head. ‘What can I get you, pal?’

It stares at him blankly.

‘Alright, tell you what, I do a big breakfast that’s something real special. Why don’t I get cookin’, and then if you want, you can tell me a bit about yourself.’ He smiles, warm and conciliatory, and disappears into the kitchen.

 _Tell me a bit about yourself_. It searches for relevant data points. The dog tags are cool against its bare chest and it holds them up, looking for a name.

The man comes back with a heaped plate. ‘Hot cakes – best in the county – bacon, hash-browns, sausage, fried tomatoes, and eggs. Didn’t know how you liked your eggs but in my book the only way is runny’n’sunny, so that’s what you’ve got.’

‘Thanks.’ It has no idea how to best tactically approach the vast pile of food before it.

‘You look a little scared, there,’ the man laughs, ‘must have been a _real_ long time since you had a proper meal.’

‘I’m used to protein paste,’ it says.

‘I hear that. I would have killed a dozen of my own brothers in arms to get a meal like that when I served.’ He looks at the plate with a wistful expression on his face.

‘Brian Curtis,’ it says, extending a hand.

‘Ron Little,’ he replies, shaking its hand. His eyebrows shoot upwards at the sensation of metal fingers but he says nothing. Ron slides down into the booth, sitting opposite it as it attempts to eat one-handed. ‘So what’re you doing in these parts, Brian?’

‘Eating breakfast,’ it – Brian? – replies, trying to get a whole egg into its mouth with just a fork.

‘Wise guy, is it?’ Ron laughs.

‘Top secret mission,’ it answers honestly, feeling – bad? ‘It went- wrong.’

Ron contemplates it quietly for a few minutes and it uses the opportunity to roll a hotcake around a sausage and stuff it all in its mouth at once. _Skill acquired: eating_. The powdered sugar on the hotcake tickles its throat and it coughs, spraying food all over the table. _Reassessment: further training required_.

‘You might want to slow down a bit, trying cutting bite-sized pieces,’ Ron says, amused.

‘Can’t,’ it says, tugging back its sleeve to reveal the splint around its wrist. _Visual assessment: unnatural coloration and swelling. Arm not usually black. Attend to at later date, after ‘bacon’_.

Ron sucks a breath in through his teeth. ‘You got someone to look at that for you, Brian?’

‘It’s fine,’ it says around a fried tomato. Seeds run down its chin and it wipes them off with its sleeve.

 _Look at this disgusting говнюк, it eats like an животное_. The memory fires before its eyes and it jumps violently backwards, flinching from a slap to the face that could have happened anywhere from a day to a decade ago. It comes back to itself and the gun is clutched in its injured hand. Ron has his hands up, a calm expression on his face.

‘It’s alright, Brian. It’s just a memory, just shellshock. It’s not real.’ There’s a beat, then he reaches out slowly, slowly, taking the gun from its shaking fingers. ‘Alright, now. I’m just going to take this, ok? Then I’m going to be right back with some ice for that arm of yours.’

He gets up slowly and walks to the kitchen. It can see him pick up the phone through the little porthole in the door. It shoves the rest of the sausages in its pocket and runs.

It still has no idea where it is beyond ‘America’. It walks along the edge of the road out of town until it comes to a road sign. The sign honest to goodness points to Hicksville and it punches the ground in frustration. It leans against the sign for a few minutes, then keeps walking, falling into the stupor it inhabits after long missions during transportation. It has barely been ten minutes when it is woken by the sound of tyres and a police car rolls up beside it.

‘You Brian Curtis?’ an officer asks, stepping out of the car.

‘Apparently,’ it says, waving the dog tags. The officer says something into a walkie talkie.

‘We’d like you to come with us,’ they say, opening the back door of the police car and standing back patiently. It holds up a finger, leans over, and vomits up everything it has eaten. The officer takes a step forward and it lashes out, throws a punch that goes wide and the officer Tasers it. The other officer gets out of the car and the pair of them drag it up and shove it into the back seat.

‘HYDRA are getting sloppy,’ it says. ‘It took you hours to find me.’

The officers glance at it in the rear view mirror but say nothing.

It expects to be shocked and beaten and put back in the tank but instead it sits in a holding cell at the police station for an hour or so. They find and confiscate the cattle prod but it manages to keep a hold of the sausages. It glares at the town drunk until he gets off the cot and curls up on it, nibbling on a sausage until it falls asleep.

It wakes up to a needle being pushed into its neck. Someone in a white uniform tucks its hair behind its ear. ‘Just a sedative, sweetie.’ It’s lifted onto a stretcher and the last thing it sees is the drunk saluting it with its own sausage. It tries to run but its limbs don’t work.

This time it wakes on a narrow bed in a small, white-washed room. Its wrist is in a cast. Its body has been washed and it is wearing thin, cotton pyjamas. There is a window in the wall opposite, covered by a metal grill, through which it can see the sky and treetops. A door opens and someone in a white uniform enters.

‘Hello, Mr. Curtis. It is Mr. Curtis, isn’t it?’ they sit on the edge of its bed.

‘Sure.’ It doesn’t have its dog tags anymore.

‘Do you know where you are?’

‘HYDRA facility.’ It shrugs as if the answer is obvious.

‘HYDRA? The Nazi organisation?’ they frown. ‘Why would you think this is a HYDRA facility, Mr. Curtis?’

‘Can we just get this over with?’ It tips its head back, ready. ‘I’m ready to be put back under now.’

‘What exactly do you think we’re going to do to you, Mr. Curtis?’ they say softly.

‘Look, lady, I don’t know what fresh fuckery this is but if you think HYDRA can still surprise me, you’re wrong. I saw the Red Skull pull his own face off. I can take it.’ The words tumble out and it doesn’t understand what they mean.

‘I’ll ask you not to use that language on my ward, Mr. Curtis.’

‘That’s not my name.’

‘Oh? Then what is?’

 _Shit_. It hasn’t prepared for this question. ‘The Arm. Asset.’ It searches for the right title. ‘Soldier.’

‘Hmm.’ She regards it with clinical interest.

They apply the electrodes to its brain.

***

No mission protocols are given. It is left, foggy and empty, on a narrow bed. It has no purpose, no mission, and without a purpose it is nothing, so it sits in the corner of the common area and sleeps. It takes a month for HYDRA to find it, which they only manage because one of the nurses leaked to the press that there was an abused veteran with a metal arm languishing in an asylum and he was _pretty_ sure that the guy was one of those Stark experiments. HYDRA appears on the same day as Howard Stark arrives with a huge press contingent to make a sizeable donation and announce a new veteran’s wing at the hospital. It is wheeled past by a HYDRA agent disguised as a transfer nurse and for the briefest of moments it locks eyes with Stark. He frowns as though trying to place its face, pausing his incessant patter. Then a journalist asks a question about his son and he’s back on again, and it is taken back to a HYDRA facility where its wrist is re-fractured in the worst beating it can remember, which is to say the only one. But it remembers what it is and it remembers its face, blonde and strong with one blue eye and one red.

***

_DATE AND LOCATION UNKNOWN_

It executes a row of twelve recruits. They film two different versions of the same scene. In the first, the recruits are on their knees, backs turned, bags over their heads. It uses fake rounds and they drop on cue. The second is the real one. The recruits stand to attention, and it looks them in the eyes as it fires. It finds nothing there. One by one they fall to the ground, and when the cameras are satisfied it drags them into a pile and burns them.

It still smells like burning flesh when it returns to the bunker. Smoke clings to its skin and its clothes. The stink raises the hackles of the other recruits, the ones whose existence remains buried. The agents are on high alert. They all prowl around each other, waiting.

It prowls too, testing the limits of its leash. It is being rewarded, allowed more freedom of movement and less time in the tank between missions. It maps out the building in its head, an idle tactical task. There are three possible emergency exit routes, each with wildly differing variables. It calculates how long each route would take, the possibility of both one and two capable soldiers using them, the difference if one must carry the other. It stalks a route around the tanks, pausing by the Arm only when confident it is alone. Instinct fuels this decision, the vague knowledge at the back of its mind that if it was caught it would be wiped and placed under again.

It learns, and it remembers, and it waits.


	3. Part Two: Inconspicuous American Lives

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning this chapter for graphic violence right at the beginning, amateur surgery, bodily fluids, sex work, blowjobs. As always, please let me know if you have any specific triggers/warnings you need to know about. 
> 
> I hope you enjoy!

_MEXICAN DESERT, DATE ESTIMATION MID 1980s_

An opportunity comes, after so many years of waiting.

It watches itself through the scope as the Eye shakes hands with the target. It checks its watch: one minute and twenty three seconds until it is scheduled to pull the trigger. It looks back through the scope. The crack of a gunshot echoes through the valley. It watches through the scope as the Eye staggers backwards, jacket darkening. Blood pounds in its ears and it fights to be professional, to do a visual sweep and try to spot the rival sniper. It spots a flash of red half a mile to its left and through the scope it sees her: while camouflaged, she has pulled her hood back to take the shot. Her red hair is loose, short, curling softly around her face. She salutes at it and is gone.

More shots sound from below and it leaps to its feet, half running, half sliding down the slope. (It is kneeling, pressing a hand to its shoulder as blood pumps between its fingers.) Agents are fighting the target’s soldiers. There is noise, and chaos, and bodies fall.

It sees an empty Jeep, sees the world opening up beyond the end of the valley, and it’s abandoning the mission, taking the chance. It staggers to its feet and socks the closest agent on the jaw. It picks up the gun with its good arm and shoots two agents in its path.

It bursts through the thin coverage of the scrub and slams into a HYDRA agent. The agent falls, gun flying, and it sprints forward. A bullet whizzes past its cheek and it drops, rolls, kicks the legs out from underneath someone – agent, target, it decides to stop taking note – and rises again, cracks its metal elbow into someone else’s chin.

It sees the Eye making for the Jeep, makes eye contact, changes course. It sees itself grappling with someone, a handler sneaking up behind with a prod. It aims, fires, runs. It is almost level with itself now, each ducking as bullets fly all around. It is metres from the Jeep. The keys glint in the ignition.

A HYDRA agent strides into its path, well-worn notebook in his hand. ‘Stand down, soldiers,’ he barks. The agent holds a prod half-raised, casual, confident.

A bullet strikes the ground near the agent’s feet and in his split second of distraction it steps forward, hooks its metal fingers through the flesh under his chin, and rips off his bottom jaw in one swift, savage movement. The agent drops and it leaps into the vehicle, dragging itself into the passenger seat. It fires at the other agents trying to converge on them and slams down on the accelerator, peeling down the valley.

Another Jeep follows them out. It hands over the rifle, keeping one hand on the steering wheel. It climbs over the passenger seat and focuses its mechanical eye, steadying itself on the boot. It pulls the trigger and the other vehicle is consumed in a ball of fire. The kickback slams the rifle butt into its wounded shoulder and it grunts, clambering awkwardly back into the passenger seat.

They clear the valley just as there’s a second explosion from the Jeep, followed by a loud rumble as the side of the valley entrance gives way in a landslide. Rocks fly past and it steers erratically to avoid them, hits a ridge, almost flips the Jeep. It steadies the vehicle, presses the accelerator to the floor, putting miles between it and the failed assassination attempt.

It drives in silence without slowing for hours, until the sky turns orange and crimson and the lights of Ciudad Juárez begin to twinkle in the distance. Then the engine begins to sputter and it parks behind a rocky outcrop. It turns to the passenger seat and sees blood, so much blood and a closed eye in a white face.

It panics, reaching out, but a hand grabs it by the wrist and the eye flies open. ‘Imperative: abandon vehicle.’

It shakes its head. ‘Primary imperative: medical.’

It pops open the glove compartment and pulls out the medical kit, hunting for needle and thread and bandage.

‘The bullet’s still in there,’ it says, pulling off its shirt. The wounds glistens wetly in the dying sun.

It breathes deeply, in through its nose and out through its mouth, then jams its metal finger into the bullet hole. It clutches the door of the Jeep, metal buckling under its grip and it gives terse instructions: to the left, other left, deeper. It pulls out the bullet, letting it clutter onto the floor, and washes the wound out with saline. Then it makes two more incisions, under each body’s right ear, and presses and squeezes until the newly implanted tracking devices slide out.

‘Report: likelihood of survival.’

‘Likelihood high. Mission: keep running.’ It gestures at the lights of Ciudad Juárez. ‘Better to keep heading north.’

‘Negative.’ It applies a dressing to the wound with more force than is strictly necessary, observing the pained reaction. ‘Reaching city impossible in current condition.’

‘Negative.’ It points to the rifle in the back seat, then to headlights dotting the horizon to the east. It nods, takes the rifle, sprints into the growing darkness.

It reaches the edge of a road, positions itself, and waits. Headlights appear and it steps into the road, rifle raised. The vehicle – a battered Ford Ranchero with Texas plates – brakes hard. It pulls the driver through the window and snaps his neck, then does the same to the passenger. It takes their clothes and wallets and dumps their bodies half a mile from the road, then drives the truck back to where the Jeep waits.

It stashes its guns and gear under the seats and change clothes. The new clothes consist primarily of blue denim. It pulls a baseball cap that says ‘Everything’s bigger in Texas’ down low over its red eye. It torches the Jeep for good measure before the bumpy drive back to a road into Ciudad Juárez.

The streets are packed, and they crawl towards the border. It parks briefly to buy them bottles of water and tortillas bulging with rice and beef and beans. It finds the passports of the men it killed in the glove compartment and strategically drips beef and beans over the photographs as they near the border. It grins at the guard with a mouthful of tortilla as it hands them over, and he laughs.

‘You boys have a safe drive,’ he says, waving them through. It lets its expression drop back into neutral as they cross the bridge into El Paso. It leans out the window and flicks the tracking devices into the tray of a truck going in the opposite direction.

***

It drives out of El Paso and across the Texan border into New Mexico. Near dawn it pulls off the side of the road outside a small town and hides the truck. It leaves the rifle, hiding as many knives and handguns in its pockets as it can. The Arm supports the Eye, which remains obstinately conscious. It hitchhikes to Santa Fe, squeezing into the cabin of an eighteen-wheeler for most of the way.

The driver is a muscular woman with spiky black hair, and she makes a big show and tell of her two shotguns before she lets them into the truck. ‘They ain’t kidding,’ she driver guffaws, pointing at its baseball cap as it jostles into the seats. ‘Where you boys headed?’

‘North,’ it says.

‘Doing one of those “find yourself” jaunts then, eh?’ she elbows it in the ribs and it stiffens, fingering a switchblade in its pocket. ‘My boy went on one of those, got about fifty miles before he shacked up with some girl just outside of Omaha. Settled down real quick.’

It takes turns sleeping in short bursts while she talks or sings along to the radio. She raises an eyebrow when it links its hands together, but doesn’t pause her rendition of “Heart of Glass”. They make good speed into Santa Fe.

‘You boys stay safe now,’ she says as she drops it at a service station. This is the second time someone has told it to stay safe and it thinks this must be some kind of joke.

The service station has a diner attached, with blue Formica tabletops and a tacky wallpaper pattern of mountains and deer. It buys a map of the United States and orders two breakfasts with everything and tries to make itself inconspicuous in a corner booth.

‘Where you boys headed?’ the waitress asks. She’s pretty, with frizzy hair and a gappy smile.

‘North,’ it says in unison, and she laughs.

‘Well, Colorado’s real nice this time of year, if you’re going up that way.’ She traces a route on the map. ‘I’ve been up there hiking with my boyfriend a few times, you should check it out! A person could really disappear up there.’

It looks at itself, reaches a silent agreement, then thanks her stiffly.

‘No problem honey, you two have a nice time,’ she says, smiling broadly as she refills its coffee cups.

Colorado seems as good a place as any. Not as far from the site of its escape as it would like, but unlikely enough and far enough from any significant HYDRA cells to allow it to hide out relatively easily. It plans out a circuitous route on the map: from Santa Fe to Garden City, from Garden City to Lexington, then back west to Laramie, before finally hitching south to Boulder.

‘Hey honey, buy me a song?’ the waitress smiles flirtatiously and nods at the jukebox as she refills its cups for the third time. ‘It’s real quiet in here, I could use some music.’

It slides out of the booth and puts a coin in the machine. She comes up behind it, puts a hand on the small of its back, pushes a button on the machine and the records flip over. Madonna starts playing and she winks at it. ‘Thanks, sweetheart. Hey, what’s your name?’

Its metal hand clenches and unclenches in its pocket as it stares at the jukebox, looking for an answer. ‘It’s… Bennie.’

‘And who’s your friend in the very accurate hat?’ she winks again.

‘That’s… Jude.’

‘Well, I wish all my customers were as cute as you two,’ she says, and laughs. ‘Thanks for the song.’

She gives its arm a squeeze and disappears out the back. It slinks back to the booth, Madonna still pumping.

‘Jude,’ it says, tasting the name. The word sticks in its throat, necessary but wrong.

‘Hi Jude.’ It sticks out a hand.

‘Hi Bennie,’ Jude says, shaking Bennie’s hand. ‘Pleased to meet you.’

***

Bennie buys Jude a box of brown hair dye and an eye-patch from a drugstore up the street and they dye its – his – hair in the service station bathroom. They put a new dressing on Jude’s shoulder. When they’re alone they practice things like ‘talking’ and ‘walking like a human person’. A surly vacuum salesman takes them from Santa Fe to Garden City in the back of his station wagon. They get most of the way to Lexington by hiding in the back of a cattle truck, pressed against the timber sides by heavy, dull-eyed beasts. They jump out a few miles from Lexington when the driver stops to piss and walk in silence towards the city.

Jude knows, from his performances in the propaganda reels, that Jude is not his real name, but ‘Steve Rogers’ is an infinitesimal piece of information on which to build a self. Who he is remains buried. All he knows is that Bennie is meant to be at his side. They are- if not the same entity, perhaps, then still two halves of some kind of whole.

‘I need to rest,’ Jude says after a few miles of walking. It’s the first time he can remember referring to himself as ‘I’. It’s a jarring sensation.

They make a sort of camp out of sight of the road, in a cluster of trees. Jude lowers himself stiffly onto a fallen tree trunk. Bennie frowns at him, then strides forward and yanks his jacket down off his injured shoulder. Jude’s shirt is crusty with blood and pus.

‘Take it off,’ Bennie orders. Jude complies awkwardly. The dressing sticks to the shirt and peels off with it. The wound underneath is weeping, the skin around it inflamed.

Bennie rattles off a string of expletives in Russian, rooting through their things for the medical kit and its bottle of saline. ‘What’s the point of all this if you can’t even get over a little scratch?’

‘I did lose a _lot_ of blood, and the bullet may have been dipped in poison.’ Jude grimaces as Bennie begins roughly cleaning the wound. ‘It was only three days ago. We haven’t stopped since then.’

‘We _can’t_ stop.’ Bennie looks momentarily frightened. ‘If they catch us-‘

‘They won’t,’ Jude replies fiercely.

‘If they do, it will be because your useless ass decides to have his arm drop off,’ Bennie says, flicking a glob of pus to the ground.

‘Thanks, that’s real nice.’ They grin at each other, and for a moment all either of them can remember is this.

Bennie takes the watch. Jude falls asleep sitting upright, intending to stay alert, but he slowly slumps sideways until his head rests on Bennie’s shoulder. Instead of watching the darkness around them, Bennie ends up watching Jude. His chest is bare beneath his denim jacket. The thin trace of a scar splits him navel to sternum, as though he’s been autopsied. Bennie wishes he could remember how it happened, then is glad that he can’t. He traces the scar with a metal finger, marvelling at how Jude shivers and curls further into him. He falls asleep without meaning to, cold hand over Jude’s heart.

***

They wake abruptly to the scream of some hidden bird. Bennie yells another string of multi-lingual expletives into the trees as Jude tries to bury himself in his armpit. The tails of his nightmares twitch through his mind.

 ‘You are absolutely terrible at keeping watch,’ Jude grumbles, jabbing Bennie in the ribs.

‘I’m not trained to protect against wildlife,’ he replies, then realises that’s not technically true. Also, he feels like a rookie idiot for falling asleep on the job.

They take a more leisurely pace into Lexington. Bennie insists on half-carrying Jude, who attempts to wax lyrical about the landscape with his limited vocabulary rote from speeches and propaganda and the snatches of conversation they’ve heard along the way.

‘See how it stretches out to the horizon?’

‘Yes, it’s very flat.’

‘You have no appreciation for beauty.’

‘Well, yeah. Wonder why that is.’

They eat at a diner on the main street. The diner has fake red leather seats, brown Formica tabletops and a mural of cornfields which wraps around the walls. Bennie counts out the handful of coins they have left: just enough for coffee and two slices of pie.

‘We’ll find work when we get to Denver,’ Jude says, trying to push half his pie onto Bennie’s plate.

‘Don’t you fucking dare,’ Bennie growls, grabbing Jude’s jaw and shoving a fistful of pie into his mouth. He squirms in protest, cherry juice dribbling down his chin. ‘I’ll find the money to get us there. You stay here and try not to draw attention to yourself.’

Jude responds by gesturing to his eye-patch and pie-covered face. Bennie claps him on the shoulder and swings out of the booth, stalking out of the diner.

He walks to the truck stop down the street, adjusting his usual prowl to a broad, open stride. There are false identities in the back of his mind, part of his training. He eases one on, the one that was used for warm, sweaty things with hands and faces, for being told he was lovely and for touching but not killing. He wrestles his expression into something approaching sultry and inviting, and leans against the wall of the truck stop next to the bathroom. A few people pass, pretending not to see him. A man around his own age tries to get in his face, calls him names, and Bennie casually opens his jacket to reveal the gun tucked into his waistband and the array of knives protruding from his inner pockets. The man hurries on his way.

Finally a man in his late forties, dressed well enough with greying temples, approaches casually like he’s there to ask the time.

‘How much?’ he asks casually.

‘Fifty,’ Bennie replies.

‘You’ve got to be kidding,’ the man snorts. They stare each other down for a few moments, the man appraising Bennie. ‘Thirty five.’

Bennie shrugs and goes into the bathroom. The man follows, locking the door behind them.

He gets down on his knees on the wet floor and unzips the man’s pants as moisture soaks into his jeans. The man takes a condom out of his wallet and rolls it on. It’s over quickly; the man removes the full condom with a practiced motion and drops it in the sink. He pulls a twenty out of his wallet and drops it on the floor.

‘We said thirty five,’ Bennie growls. The man sneers and drops a few ones. They stick to the damp floor and the man leaves as Bennie pries them up. His mouth tastes like rubber and his scalp aches from the man tugging at his hair.

Jude is picking crumbs off his plate when Bennie returns. He takes in the stained jeans and rumpled hair. ‘You look like you went crawling for coins in a ditch.’

‘I’m getting an American cheeseburger. I feel like while we’re in America, we should have an American cheeseburger.’ He hides behind the menu.

‘Bennie…’ Jude sighs and thinks better of whatever he was going to say. He waves a hand at the waitress and orders them both a burger.

***

It takes them another three days to make it from Lexington to Laramie and from there to Boulder. They squat in an empty warehouse, doing reconnaissance missions through the town and its outskirts.

Bennie sees a help wanted sign at a saw mill and lumber yard and they spend a few days scoping the place out from a nearby rooftop.

‘We can both apply, get two pay checks,’ Jude reasons. Bennie pulls off the baseball cap that Jude has been wearing since Mexico and flicks him in the eye-patch. ‘Hey! Asshole.’

‘People in this country know your face.’

‘They’re not to be looking for me in a Colorado lumber yard.’ Jude has a stubborn set in his jaw.

‘You think they won’t figure it out when you’re there working beside them every day?’

‘And you don’t think they’ll be talking about the guy with the metal arm?’ Jude knocks on Bennie’s bicep and it clunks.

‘I’ll wear long sleeves. And gloves.’ They glare at each other.

‘Fine. I’ll just sit around and play house then, shall I?’ Jude huffs, jamming the baseball cap back down over his dyed hair. ‘Be a good little wife.’

‘Atta girl.’ Jude makes a swipe for him but Bennie is already jumping off the rooftop.

He strides across the street, hands shoved in his pockets. Jude watches as he relaxes his posture with each step, trying to walk more like a man and less like a killing-thing.

‘What you want?’ the overseer asks Bennie, looking him over distastefully.

‘I’m here about the job.’ He realises that he hasn’t changed his clothes in a week and probably smells like a pig’s ass, so he keeps his distance.

‘We don’t need any hippies.’ The man waves his hand dismissively. ‘I’m not giving you a job just so you can chain yourself to every tree we try and chop down.’

‘I won’t give you any trouble.’ Bennie runs through appropriate tones of voice in his head: wheedling will make him sound pathetic and desperate; angry will lead to violence, and violence brings attention; sad has the same problem as wheedling; too confident and he’ll be run off for being an upstart. He knows he sounds flat, emotionless, is saying things automatically because they seem like what someone applying for a job would say. ‘I’m a hard worker and I keep to myself.’

‘Yeah? Well you look like a junkie hobo.’ The man crosses his arms. Bennie deliberates for half a second, then strides into the yard and lifts a bundle of lumber onto his shoulder. He holds it comfortably, making his posture look as relaxed as possible. The man whistles.

‘Give me a trial.’

The man nods slowly. ‘Two weeks, no pay. Be here tomorrow, seven a.m. Any funny business and you’re out of here. And son?’ he waves a hand disgustedly at Bennie’s appearance. ‘Clean yourself up a bit first.’

‘Yessir.’ Bennie salutes and drops the lumber back in its pile.

***

He shows up precisely on time the next morning in a new shirt stolen from a clothes line, clean-shaven after a trip to the barber with the last of their funds. His jeans are still filthy from the road, but that seems less important. The shirt is black, with long sleeves, and a size too small; he frets about how it shows off the discrepancy between the thick musculature of his metal arm and the half-starved thinness of his flesh limb.

He works quietly and efficiently, observing the other men on the yard. He catalogues how they interact with each other, making notes of common words and phrases. He says them aloud to himself, while the saw is too loud for him to be overheard. By the time the whistle sounds for the morning break, he has accumulated enough knowledge to be capable of short conversations.

There is a small tea room in a demountable building between the lumber yard and the mill where the men take their breaks. A woman is placing boxes of pastries in the centre of each table. Several pots of coffee sit along the bench.

‘Hey new guy, you want a coffee?’ a burly man with a close-cropped beard shakes a styrofoam cup at him. He nods, and the man pours.

‘Black, no sugar.’ Bennie takes the full cup and they sit beside each other on rickety plastic chairs. ‘Cheers.’

‘You’re new in town, right? You a drifter?’ the man asks, reaching for a bearclaw. ‘’Cause you wanna give the boss notice if you’re gonna skip out or he’ll hunt you down.’

‘Naw. I think I’m lookin’ to stay a while.’ He sips the coffee and tries to figure out which pastry will be easiest to sneak into the pocket of his jeans.

‘Yeah? You got a place?’ Bennie shakes his head. ‘Well I gotta cousin with an empty place outta town, it’s pretty run down but I can ask if he minds you taking it. Means I can tell the boss where you are.’ The man winks.

‘That’s awful nice of you,’ Bennie says, slipping momentarily into an old fashioned parlance he doesn’t quite recognise. ‘But I, ah… I got a friend with me too.’

‘Yeah? You eloped with some sweet preacher’s daughter?’ he winks again.

‘Nothing like that. He’s-‘ Bennie searches for an appropriate way to refer to Jude. ‘He’s a pal. We’re in this together.’

‘That’s cool, man, as long as he ain’t a junkie.’ The man claps Bennie on the shoulder. ‘I’ll call my cousin tonight, let you know tomorrow.’

‘Thank you, that’s- that’s awful nice.’ Bennie manages a human-looking smile.

‘No sweat. I’m Dean, by the way.’

‘Bennie.’ They shake hands, and then Dean insists on taking Bennie around the room and introducing him to everyone: Blake, an enormous man with stringy blonde hair; Mabel the secretary who sets out the pastries, curt and intelligent; Big Ed, a wiry man with bad teeth and a cigarette tucked behind each ear; Tim, the oldest in his sixties; Tim’s younger brother Tom; Samuel the mechanic; surly Harrison; and Georgie, the overseer’s son.

Bennie is exhausted and jumpy by the time he has met everyone, and is grateful when he is able to get back to work. He falls easily into the rhythms of the place; it feels natural to follow orders, which bothers him, though perhaps less than he thinks it should. At lunch Dean gives him one of his two sandwiches and at afternoon tea Dean manages to figure out that Bennie and his ‘little friend’ don’t have anywhere to stay that night.

‘My wife would be happy to have you, I promise, she loves to cook for lots of people and she’s been dying to have guests, she just redecorated the spare bedroom…’ Dean talks a mile a minute with the express purpose of wearing Bennie down until he agrees.

Patrick, the overseer, pulls Bennie aside at the end of the day. ‘You did a good day’s work today. Keep that up and you’ll have a contract by the end of the week.’

‘Thank you, sir,’ Bennie replies, standing at attention.

‘You a military man?’ Patrick asks.

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Good lad. Discipline! Underrated. Well, I heard Dean’s taken you under his wing, so no good deed goes unpunished, eh?’ Patrick claps Bennie on the shoulder and guffaws. ‘I kid, I kid. His wife, Emma, she’s a saint. You feel free to tell Bennie to ease off, alright?’

Bennie meets Dean at the entrance to the lumber yard in his shiny blue Chevy. Bennie directs him to a block over from where he and Jude have been squatting and instructs him to wait.

‘How was work, sweetheart?’ Jude asks sarcastically when Bennie drops in through the window.

‘Just wonderful, darling. We’ve been invited to dinner.’ Bennie eyes Jude appraisingly; Jude is filthy, slightly blood stained, and has stubble so thick that it is threatening to become a beard. ‘Is there any possible way you can clean yourself up?’

‘I thought the plan was that I would stay out of sight while you played social butterfly.’ Jude looks around at the squalid building. ‘I could wash my face in that puddle I guess.’

‘Never mind.’ Bennie pulls off the Bigger in Texas baseball cap and tosses it into the puddle. ‘That will have to do.’

Dean lets out a low whistle as Jude climbs into the truck. ‘You look like you’ve been in the wars.’

‘You don’t know the half of it,’ he jokes darkly, before sticking out his hand. ‘Jude.’

‘Dean,’ he replies, shaking the proffered hand. ‘No offence, but I might sneak you in through the back door so you can clean up before Emma sees you.’

Dean takes great pride in pointing out various sights around the town, and they politely feign interest as though they haven’t spent an extensive amount of time scoping everything out. Finally he pulls up outside a modest but neat one-story brick house. They clamber out of the truck and Dean starts leading them around the back, but a pretty redhead emerges from the front door and greets them, hands on her hips.

For a moment the sight of her red hair makes Bennie tense up, reaching for one of his hidden knives, but this woman is too tall, doesn’t carry herself with the same deadly movement. He relaxes.

‘Dean Quincy Jones, what are you up to? Are you trying to sneak strangers into my house?’ she smiles, but her eyes are shrewd.

‘Yes ma’am, sorry ma’am.’ Dean embraces her and kisses her cheek, which she allows. ‘This here is Bennie, just started at the mill today, and this is his friend Jude. They’ve been having a rough time of it, and I said they could stay with us for a day or so.’

‘Did you now?’ she looks them up and down with amusement. Her eyes linger on Jude for an uncomfortably long time. ‘Well you’d better come in then.’

The house is cosy and warm inside, with cream walls and forest green furnishings. Both Bennie and Jude are able to take a shower while Emma makes dinner, and they are given some of Dean’s old clothes to wear. Dean even gives Jude a razor, and by the time dinner is served they both look close to presentable.

Emma serves them both generous helpings of meatloaf, beans and mashed potatoes, and they force themselves to eat at a polite pace.

‘Now, how did you two end up in Boulder?’ Emma asks when she judges that they are no longer starving.

‘We hitchhiked,’ says Jude, after the two of them exchange glances.

‘I figured that from the state of your clothes,’ she laughs. ‘I mean, why here?’

‘A waitress recommended it,’ Bennie replies truthfully.

‘You know what you two are? Damn mysterious, that’s what,’ Dean says, waving his fork at them. ‘You’re both army, I can tell that much. My dad served, I know the look of a military man. What was it, special ops? You see too much, running away from what you’ve done?’

‘Something like that,’ Jude says, and the two of them stare uncomfortably at their plates.

‘You leave the poor boys alone, dear,’ Emma says, standing up and beginning to clear away the plates. ‘Now, how’s about dessert?’

Jude stands and helps her clear the table while Dean engages Bennie with talk about the mill. In the kitchen, Emma smiles at Jude as she scrapes scraps into the disposal. ‘Sorry about my husband. He loves people, wants to know all about them. I always said we should move to a big city so he can be around as many people as he wants, but he says he’s happy here.’

‘You’re both doing us a mighty big kindness, we can hardly begrudge you a few questions,’ Jude says, flashing his most charming smile. ‘Really, anything we can do to repay you…’

‘Nonsense, it’s our pleasure.’ She smiles warmly at him. ‘Whatever you need, really.’

‘Thank you, ma’am.’

Each of the men gets a third of an apple pie and two scoops of vanilla ice-cream. Emma has a glass of sherry while they eat. After they’ve cleaned up – Jude and Dean forming an extremely efficient dish washing and drying duo – they retire to the den and watch a rerun of a cowboy film on the television. Jude and Dean cannot recall ever having actually watched a television before and they sit in silence, nursing beers, inordinately fascinated. Before long, however, Dean declares that they ought to get to bed if they want to make it to work on time in the morning, and Emma shows them to their room.

The room has striped cream wallpaper and heavy green drapes, and the two beds are made up with green and pink chintz spreads. Jude removes his eye-patch and places it on the nightstand. They fold their borrowed clothes neatly on the white bureau and climb into the beds in their underwear. Bennie makes sure the window is open and they have a clear path of exit. He pretends to be asleep long enough that he is sure Jude is unconscious, then puts his pants back on and sits on top of the covers, keeping watch.

***

Bennie closes his eyes for just a moment and wakes to screaming. Jude is thrashing, torso hanging off the edge of his bed, arms reaching out. ‘Bucky! Bucky, no!’ he yells, body bucking and rolling.

Bennie leaps across the room and grabs him as he falls to the floor and the door bursts open, Dean silhouetted in the doorway and Emma standing a little way behind him.

‘What the hell is going on in here?’ Dean bellows. Then the hallway light reflects off Bennie’s arm and he freezes. ‘What on earth is that?’

Bennie ignores him for the moment. He holds Jude in his arms, trying to stop him from thrashing. ‘Wake up, it’s only a nightmare. Wake up, you big-‘

Jude grabs Bennie around the throat, eye wide. They stare at each other, breathing heavily, until he comes back to himself and lets go.

‘Sorry. Bad dream.’ His red eye whirrs and calibrates.

‘You don’t say.’

‘Your eye. I’ve seen you, on the television. You’re- you’re Steve Rogers,’ Dean says, face ashen. Jude fixes his red eye on the couple in the doorway. ‘You’re fucking Captain Crimson. And you-’ he turns to Bennie, ‘I don’t know who the fuck you really are, but you’ve got a metal arm with a red star on it.’

They both rise to their feet and Dean backs away, shielding Emma. ‘You stay the fuck away from us. I’m gonna call the cops. Honey, call Elijah.’

Jude’s eye scans Dean, scans the doorway, makes a series of calculations: lethal and non-lethal options, most efficient of escape. Instead, he holds up his hands, palms outwards, and takes a slow step backwards. ‘Please.’

‘What the hell do you want from us?’ Dean’s voice wavers.

‘We just want to be left alone,’ Jude says. ‘We don’t want to be whatever the hell we are anymore. We don’t want to have to hurt people.’

‘But we will,’ Bennie says in a low voice, ‘if we have to. If you force our hand.’

‘We don’t want any trouble,’ Dean says.

‘Neither do we, truly.’ Jude sits, slowly, on the edge of the bed, and motions for Bennie to do the same. ‘We promise that we aren’t a threat to you.’

‘Are you here to destroy America?’ Dean asks, defiantly bombastic.

‘No, sir. We want to live as inconspicuous American lives as possible, no destruction involved.’

‘I believe him, Dean,’ Emma says quietly, ducking under his arm.

‘Honey, don’t…’ Dean tries to pull her back but she shrugs him off.

She switches the light on and under its warm glow their every bruise and scar is visible. Jude’s bullet wound is still pink and swollen, and she points at it. ‘Did you get that escaping? Is that what happened?’

‘Yes, ma’am,’ Jude and Bennie exchange looks, and he continues, ‘We, ah, violently defected. We’re on the run, thought Boulder was as good a place as any to hide out.’

‘The Soviets must be furious to have lost their favourite pet,’ Dean snorts.

‘Good,’ he replies.

‘You’re a traitor to your country. Who knows what could happen to us if we don’t turn you in,’ Dean says, looking at Emma. ‘You swear you just want live in peace? You’re not here to launch secret nuclear missiles?’

Jude stands and places his right hand over his heart. ‘We swear.’

Bennie nods, but stays silent. His brain is a scramble of competing lines of code and he hopes, with everything, that it can be true.

Dean and Emma have a hushed, furious conversation in the hall. Finally Dean sighs and says, ‘We’ll keep quiet, then. But I think we should tell Emma’s brother.’

‘Honey, no, I don’t want to put him in that position…’

‘We need a plan. Just in case,’ he growls, glaring at them.

‘We’ll leave,’ Bennie says, ‘get out of here, right now. You’ll never hear from us again.’

‘No, no, it’s alright.’ Dean deflates, rubbing a hand wearily over his eyes. ‘You can have a place here.’

‘It’s not safe for you, knowing who we are,’ Jude says gently. ‘Bennie is right, we should go. We should- we should have known trying to stay in one place would be a bad idea.’

‘Don’t be silly,’ Emma snaps, ‘you’re staying and that’s final. I don’t care if you bring the whole Soviet Union down on us. That’s no more than the fear the Cold War’s had us living with every day for years now.’

‘You don’t know these people. You don’t know what they’re willing to do,’ Bennie says quietly. His hand shakes.

An alarm clock sounds from down the hall and Dean swears softly.

‘Language, dear,’ Emma admonishes. ‘I’ll go put breakfast on. Bennie, Dean, you’d better get ready. Jude – Steve – you can come help me in the kitchen.’

They share a long, agonised look and then Jude – Steve – follows Emma. Dean stands in the hallway and stares after Steve, looking both angry and dumbfounded, until Emma shoos him off to get ready. She shepherds Steve in the kitchen and starts pulling bacon and eggs out of the fridge.

‘Say my name again,’ he says softly.

‘Hm?’ she looks at him, a little frantic. She’s trembling slightly.

‘My name,’ he says again, voice barely above a whisper.

‘Steve.’ She stares at him, steadying herself on the counter. ‘You really are Steve Rogers, aren’t you?’

‘I think so.’ He breathes slowly, shuffling through memory, trying to find something to latch onto. ‘I don’t- what they did- we-‘

‘My grandfather served in World War Two. He was in the 107th.’ She smiles wryly.

‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what that means,’ he says, and her face falls.

‘They were an infantry regiment. The whole unit was captured, and Captain America – you – went behind enemy lines and rescued all of them. Six hundred men.’ She lights the stove, moving automatically as she starts laying strips of bacon in a pan. ‘He used to tell stories about you. No matter what was in the news, he never believed you’d really defected. You were always his hero.’

In solemn silence: she cracks eggs single-handed, two at a time, until the carton is empty. The bacon starts to sizzle. She hands the spatula to Steve and starts to fill the coffee pot. The light outside turns from soft grey to warm yellow, hitting the sun-catcher in the window and scattering rainbows through the kitchen. She smiles, humming softly. Dean and Bennie appear and sit at the table under the window as Emma takes the spatula back and directs Steve to the toaster. The men eat piles of bacon and four eggs each on thick slices of wholemeal toast. Emma squeezes juice and watches them eat. She fries a slice of bread in the bacon fat and nibbles on it with a thoughtful expression.

Finally Dean stands, jerking his head at Bennie. He kisses Emma goodbye, gives Steve a warning glare, and he and Bennie leave for work. Steve helps her with the dishes and then they sit at the little table in the sun.

‘You really don’t remember who you are?’ she asks gently. Steve shakes his head.

‘I know that my name is Steve Rogers and that I was American. I know what they say, which is that I defected, but…’ he shakes his head again, this time like he’s trying to shake something off. ‘They give me lines, put me in front of a camera. I do whatever I’m told. I kill people, if they tell me to. I have to.’

Her face is pale, expression pinched, but she reaches a tentative hand across and rests it on his arm. ‘How don’t remember anything else?’

‘Not really. I’ve been out of the tank maybe… six months? Bennie, he was only out a few days before we escaped.’

‘”Tank”?’ she repeats nervously.

‘After each mission they wipe us and put us in the tank. It’s… like sleep. Sort of.’ He smiles, a humourless twist of the mouth. ‘I’ve been kept out a while for good behaviour and the longer I’m out, the more I feel like maybe I could start remembering things, but… it’s like I’m trying to get to the surface from the very bottom of the ocean.’

‘You mean they’ve been, what, brainwashing you? For decades?’ she frowns, eyebrows pulled low and tight.

‘Has it been decades?’ he laughs, though it sounds more like a sigh.

‘You disappeared, in, what was it? 1945, I think. That’s forty years ago.’ She breathes out with a _whoosh_ ing noise. ‘You look good for your age. Apart from the…’ she waves her hand at his eye.

‘Do you think there’s any way to find out who I- who _we_ are?’ he feels guilty for getting caught up in himself when Bennie lacked even a name.

‘I can try. A lot of it is probably classified now. The government tries to pretend you don’t exist as much as it can.’ There’s a knock on the door and Steve starts, knife suddenly in his hand. ‘Put that away, it’s probably just Elijah. Go wait in the guest room, I’ll call you when it’s safe.’

He obeys, putting the eye-patch back on when he gets to the room. He sees that Bennie has packed all of their things into a single neat bundle, easy to grab and run. Steve hopes he hasn’t had to slit Dean’s throat.

After what seems like a very long time, Emma knocks and cracks the door open. ‘Steve? Come out and meet Elijah. Slowly, now.’

Elijah hovers in the living room, hand over the gun at his hip. He’s dressed for work in a policeman’s uniform. Elijah’s hair is a few shades tamer in its redness than Emma’s, and he is a foot taller, but they are unmistakably siblings. He squints at Steve, looking him up and down, and lets out a low whistle.

‘I thought Dean had gone crazy when he called me.’ One hand still hovering over his gun, he extends the other. ‘It’s a pleasure to meet you, I suppose.’

‘Likewise.’ They shake hands awkwardly. ‘Are you planning to arrest me? Because, no offense, but that won’t work out too well for you.’

‘Naw, even though I probably should.’ He waggles a finger at Emma. ‘I’ve promised my sister and her husband that I‘d keep an eye on you and your friend. Plus, y’know, our grandfather’s ghost would haunt the hell out of me if I screwed over Captain America.’

‘Thank you. I appreciate it.’

‘Elijah’s going to give us a lift out to Dean’s cousin’s place so you can take a look around,’ Emma says.

Steve is relieved to find that they will not be riding in a police car. He sits silently in the back seat as Emma and Elijah chat in the front. Their eyes slide frequently to watch him in the rear view mirror; Emma’s kind and concerned, Elijah’s friendly but analytical.

They drive a few miles out of town, turning up a dirt road. Elijah takes it slow, pine trees brushing against the doors of the car. Steve detects an elevation in his own heart rate: _what if this is a trap? What if they are dropping him off to HYDRA?_

A small A-frame cabin emerges from the trees. The trees have been cleared a little way on each side, and a tyre-less Datsun 620 sits rusting under a collapsing lean-to. The cabin has a little balcony and several sweet but filthy porthole-shaped windows. The paint is the same colour as the pines, and hopelessly chipped.

Emma retrieves the key from under a rock and Steve follows her inside. Light struggles to penetrate the grimy windows but his eye is better than most: he assesses the room, with it sloping roof and wooden floors. A ladder leads to a loft space and he can make out an old mattress. There’s a small, black stove in the centre of the room, chimney disappearing up through the roof, and a little bathroom at the back. The floor is strewn with old newspapers and sticks of broken furniture.

‘Oh dear, what a mess,’ Emma says, kicking a mouldering _Playboy_. ‘We can’t let you stay here.’

‘It’s fine,’ Steve says, picking up a toppled stool. ‘We’ve stayed in worse.’

Emma frowns at him, then shrugs. ‘Elijah will take you home again after he’s dropped me off at work, then when my class is over we can come back with some garbage bags and cleaning things.’

‘It it’s all the same to you, ma’am, I’d like to stay.’ He smiles. ‘It’ll give me the chance to get familiar with the place, get started cleaning. I’d like the chance to feel useful.’

Emma confers is hushed tones with Elijah. Steve knows Elijah doesn’t want to leave him there alone, still doesn’t trust him, but Emma talks him round. They finally drive off, after Steve gives them repeated assurances that he won’t go anywhere.

 He walks around the cabin, to the tree line and beyond, does a brief reconnaissance of the surrounding area. Then he examines every inch of the lean-to and the truck, followed by every inch of the outside of the cabin. There’s a small generator tacked onto the back of the building. He tries it, but the tank is empty. From the roof he can see just above the trees. At night from up here, Boulder would be a yellow glow on the horizon.

He clears the inside of the cabin efficiently, piling rubbish next to the balcony. There is a bench with a sink along one wall, and the pipes shudder angrily to life when he turns the tap. The mattress is serviceable but the sheets on it are not; he tears them into strips, wets them, and uses them to clean the windows. He is satisfied that there are no hidden bugs or cameras on the property, no tactical teams hiding in the woods beyond. He sorts the rubbish into piles, putting aside the most intact newspapers and repairable furniture.

Tyres crunch outside and Steve spots a patrol car through the window. He crouches low, weapons in hand, watching. Elijah steps out, looks at the neat piles of rubbish, leans back into the car.

‘Hoo-roo!’ he calls, emerging again with a large thermos and a metal lunchbox.

Steve steps out cautiously. There do not appear to be any other passengers. ‘You’re back.’

‘Emma insisted I bring you lunch,’ Elijah says, waving the lunchbox and grinning. ‘Honestly, she’s a menace.’

He has also brought a broom, a bucket and a roll of garbage bags. They sit on the balcony, eating sandwiches with thick slices of beef and drinking pumpkin soup.

‘So you really don’t remember who you are, huh?’ Steve shakes his head and shrugs. ‘That’s too bad. Hell of an excuse, though.’

‘Excuse?’

‘I mean, if you are actually here to destroy America.’ He winks. ‘Mind you, that outfit you used to wear, that’s something I’d be pretty keen to forget myself.’

‘I had an outfit?’ Steve tries to picture it, but his memories are closed off.

‘Oh yeah, red white ’n’ blue, stars ’n’ stripes, they whacked the whole lot on there. I’ll get you a picture.’ He stands, brushing crumbs off his uniform. ‘See you round, Captain.’

Steve salutes automatically and Elijah laughs. ‘That was a really great impression of an American hero.’ He drives off, leaving Steve with the cleaning equipment.

He sweeps, then drags the mattress outside and props it up on the balcony. In the sunlight it’s a real horror show of stains, but the springs seem intact.

He has managed to get the place practically fit for human habitation by the time Dean’s truck rolls up.

‘You been makin’ house for me, huh sweetheart?’ Bennie calls to him, grinning.

‘Got dinner all laid out and everything,’ he replies, grinning back.

‘I should hope not,’ Emma says, climbing out of the cabin with a huge hamper.

‘Aw, hell,’ says Steve.

‘Bennie convinced us you’d want to stay here tonight, so I thought we’d bring dinner to you.’ She marches up the front steps, casting an appraising eye over the room. ‘Dean, bring that lamp.’

Dean sets up a hurricane lamp on top of the stove and rolls a rug out on the floor. Emma unpacks a roast chicken and salad and soft white dinner rolls from the hamper. They eat in contented silence. Another day working alongside Bennie in the company of dangerous heavy machinery seems to have convinced Dean that he poses no immediate threat. He and Emma leave the hurricane lamp and the rug, as well as a blanket and pillows and toothbrushes and toothpaste and a change of clothes and the promise to pick Bennie up for work in the morning.

Bennie insists on carrying the mattress back up to the loft on his own. Steve grumbles, until Bennie prowls up to him and pokes him in the wounded shoulder. He hisses with pain. Amid protestations, Bennie tugs his shirt over his head to examine the wound. ‘You did too much today. This hasn’t healed.’

‘It’s healed just fine.’

‘I’ll take the first watch.’ He sits at the window in the loft, staring out into the night.

‘You need to sleep.’ Steve tries to pull him onto the mattress.

‘Fat chance, pal,’ he replies.

‘Emma said I knew her grandfather. She said I rescued him.’ He knows it comes out of nowhere, but he wants Bennie to stop staring out the window. He wants his attention.

They sit in silence for several minutes. Bennie reaches across and extinguishes the lamp. Slowly, he is able to make out Steve’s face in the dark: he looks confused and hopeful.

‘Yeah?’ he says finally. ‘Rescued from who?’

‘The enemy. He was American.’ He slides off the eye-patch and his red eye shines bright in the darkness. ‘Her brother said I had a whole patriotic outfit.’

‘Yeah, I bet you did.’ Bennie snorts. ‘I’m real happy for you, pal.’

‘Hey,’ Steve says, grabbing Bennie’s shoulders. ‘We’ll figure it out.’

‘Not all of us get to be the world’s most famous bonehead,’ Bennie says. He flops his head forward, thumping their foreheads together, and sighs. Steve laces their fingers together.

‘I know one thing, jerk,’ he says softly, ‘and that’s whoever we are, you’re important to me. They’ve never been able to change that.’

‘Yeah,’ Bennie murmurs in reply.

‘Don’t keep watch,’ Steve says.

‘Okay.’

They lie in each other’s arms until Steve falls asleep. Then Bennie slips back to the window, staring out into the night.

***

The next morning when Dean picks Bennie up, he leaves Steve a box of tools (and a thermos of coffee, three enormous beef sandwiches, a basket of cheese biscuits and an apple). Steve spends the day tinkering, repairing the lean-to and the furniture. Bennie returns with an envelope of cash – Dean has lightly bullied Patrick into giving him his pay, plus a small bonus – and a new second-hand skillet, a carton of eggs, bread, and fresh steaks wrapped in waxed paper. Bennie insists on cooking while Steve perches on a newly-repaired stool. He flips the steak with his metal fingers, sucking the juice off and hissing when he burns his tongue, which makes Steve laugh.

You didn’t bring any plates, dumbass,’ Steve says when Bennie declares the steak and eggs done.

‘That’s what the bread’s for, wise guy.’ Bennie shoves a sandwich in his face, hot and dripping with golden yolk. ‘This is why I’m the brains of the outfit.’

‘Well you sure ain’t the pretty one,’ Steve retorts, almost losing his sandwich when Bennie swipes at him.

‘You’ll hurt my feelings, talking like that,’ Bennie says, straddling another stool. ‘And after I worked so hard to bring you nice things.’

‘Feeling unappreciated? Want me to tell you you’re pretty?’ Steve laughs at Bennie’s glowering expression. ‘Aw, come on, dear. Tell me about your day.’

‘My day was just fine.’ Bennie wipes egg off his chin with the back of his hand. ‘What have you been doing, you useless layabout?’

‘Plenty.’ Steve gestures to the rickety pieces of furniture. ‘I reckon we can get that truck going. I thought I’d leave it for you to take a look at.’

‘Let the machine deal with the machine?’ Bennie says snidely.

‘You’re no more machine than I am,’ he replies sharply. ‘We’re men. Nothing else.’

Bennie places his metal palm roughly over Steve’s eye, obscuring half his face. ‘Not if we’re talking cubic inches, pal.’

Steve takes his wrist and draws it gently away. He places his own hand over Bennie’s heart, and says softly, ‘Not where it counts.’ Bennie stares at him, jaw clenches, then shoves away. He stomps up to the loft and lies on the mattress, a dark shadow out of the lamp’s light.

Steve extinguishes the lamp and takes up watch position at the window. The fire from the stove casts strange shadows on his face. He watches the night for a while, but his eyes keep dragging back to Bennie. He reaches out, placing a hand on his shoulder. Bennie flinches, then relaxes. He falls asleep quickly. Steve can feel his shoulder rising and falling with each steady breath.

***

Bennie wakes from a nightmare to the sun creeping in the window and Steve fast asleep, hand tangled in his. He snorts in disgust and tugs his hand away. Steve topples over and wakes with a start, snapping into a defensive position.

‘Fat lot of good that’ll do us now, you big lug,’ Bennie says, irritated. ‘You are the world’s worst watchman.’

‘I wasn’t sleeping,’ Steve lies, defensive.

‘Sure you weren’t.’ He climbs down from the loft and starts building a fire.

‘I can get my own breakfast. You’ll be off to work soon.’ Steve tries to shoo him away from the stove.

‘It’s Saturday, dumbass.’ Bennie makes shooing motions back. ‘Let me cook for you.’

‘Fine,’ Steve grumbles, secretly pleased. ‘I saved some of the newspapers that were lying around. I thought we could read them together, find out what’s happening in the world.’

‘You mean other than events we’ve been directly involved in?’ he cracks half a dozen eggs into the skillet. ‘Sure, let’s see what the hell that’s all like.’

Bennie has the brilliant idea of sandwiching the eggs between leftover cheese biscuits and they sprawl on the rug with the newspapers spread around them, trying not to drip yolk everywhere.

‘What the hell did you save this for, pal?’ Bennie asks, waving a copy of _Playboy_ under Steve’s nose.

‘There’re articles,’ Steve replies primly.

‘Sure,’ Bennie says, flicking through it with a raised eyebrow. The tips of his ears get steadily pinker and he tosses the magazine aside, a tight and unfamiliar warmth in his belly. ‘Seems like a real valuable source of information.’

‘Most of these are local papers,’ Steve says, also slightly pink, ‘but a couple of ‘em have bigger stories. This-‘ he points to a headline about Reagan’s inauguration, ‘and this one is mostly international news.’

None of the papers are less than two years old, but almost all of the information is new to them. They read hungrily, swapping pages and reading bits out loud or from over each other’s shoulders, until a vehicle rolls up outside. They snap to attention until Bennie spots Emma’s red hair through the windshield.

‘Hello!’ Emma calls, waving. ‘Hope you boys haven’t eaten yet!’

They look at each other sheepishly, making a silent agreement to pretend that they have not. Elijah climbs out of the driver’s side, and Dean emerges grumbling from the back. A slightly squashed-looking brunette follows him.

‘I keep telling you to get a bigger car,’ Dean says, glaring at Elijah.

‘Hey, you’re the one who didn’t want to drive separate,’ he replies.

‘Now, boys, play nice,’ the brunette says, smoothing her hair. ‘You must be Bennie and Jude.’

She extends her hand and they shake it politely, both tense.

‘This is my wife Jill,’ Elijah says, placing his hand at the small of her back. ‘She, uh, knows our grandfathers knew each other.’ He winks.

‘I’ve promised to be on my best behaviour,’ she says, smiling sweetly, ‘because Elijah says you’re practically family.’

‘That’s awful nice of him,’ Steve replies.

‘She’s a pacifist,’ Elijah mumbles apologetically as she and Emma make their way inside. ‘She hates the military. Went to Woodstock, and all. Hates cops, too, but she figures if my sister is married to a black guy then I can’t be too much of a fascist.’

‘What’s Woodstock?’ Bennie asks, and Elijah laughs.

‘Boy howdy, you guys’ve sure missed a lot.’ He claps them both on the shoulder. ‘Come on, Emma’s been cooking all morning.’

Steve suddenly remembers the dirty magazines strewn all over the rug and turns pink, dashing inside. Emma has already stuck them under the restacked newspapers. She smirks at Steve as he mutters an apology and helps her unpack the basket they’ve brought: a roast chicken, a roast beef, pastries, Caesar salad, potato salad, more cheese biscuits, a pie and two jugs of homemade lemonade.

‘This is too much,’ Steve says weakly as they sit down to eat.

‘Nonsense,’ Emma says, and that’s the end of that.

She tells them all about the challenges of trying to teach Reaganomics to college students as they eat. This sends Jill off on a tangent about the need to protest conservativism, during which she accidentally calls cops ‘pigs’, which makes Elijah snort lemonade out his nose, which makes Emma call him a pig, which sets Dean off laughing. Steve and Bennie eat quietly, entirely overwhelmed.

 ‘I’m sorry, honey, you know I’m proud of you,’ Jill says, sighing at Elijah, ‘this is just… it’s difficult. It’s a scary world.’

‘You’re not wrong,’ he replies, squeezing her knee, ‘but we do what’s necessary.’

‘You don’t really believe that, do you?’ she throws her hands in the air in exasperation. ‘I know we’ve had this argument so many times, I just-‘ she wheels on Steve and Bennie. ‘Can you really say what you do is necessary?’

‘I know the people giving us orders did,’ says Steve in a low voice.

‘And do you agree with them?’ she asks pointedly.

‘I don’t know.’ He stares at his hands. Bennie stands and walks out.

Argument erupts behind him as he stalks to the tree line. He’s shaking, head buzzing with the tiny bits of memory he has: his hands, doing violence. He doesn’t want to stop moving but he doesn’t want to stray too far so he goes up, leaping for a low branch and pulling himself further and further into the canopy. The branches of the pine tree spiral around its trunk and he climbs easily, until they will no longer take his weight. Then he takes out a knife and starts carving into the trunk: _I am B-_ He isn’t sure what follows. After a few moments’ contemplation he scratches a line through what he has written and starts again: _I am Steve’s_.

A voice floats up to him from the ground. He swings down through the branches, dropping silently to the ground. Dean is moving through the trees, calling for him. He could dart forward and snap the big man’s neck with barely any effort at all.

He clears his throat and Dean spins around.

‘Fuck me! You sure can move quiet,’ Dean gasps, clutching his chest. ‘Scared the life out of me.’

‘Sorry.’ He crosses his arm and leans back against the trunk of the tree.

‘It’s us who should be sorry. Emma or I should have come alone, should have known this would all be too much for you-‘

‘No, it’s ok. We just- haven’t really been around people in a while.’ Dean nods, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his shirt pocket. He offers one to Bennie and they each take a long drag.

‘Don’t tell Emma, she doesn’t like me smoking.’ He exhales slowly. ‘She said… Steve said something about the two of you being kept in… tanks?’

‘Yeah. Me more’n’ him.’ Bennie shudders. ‘It made it easier to transport. Kept us… docile. Obedient.’

‘These people-‘

‘You don’t wanna know.’ Something in his expression makes Dean pale.

‘Alright, I’m not gonna ask any more questions. If they’re as bad as all that, you don’t wanna be reliving it.’ He shakes his head. ‘It’s a crazy, messed up world.’

‘You’ve got no idea.’ Bennie takes a deep drag, feeling the smoke in his chest. After a moment, he blurts out, ‘The worst thing is, I don’t even know what the hell it is I’ve done. I mean, killed people, obviously, but I don’t know who, or how many. My best guess is ‘lots’.’

‘But Steve’s been on the news. The government tries to cover it up, but he’s done stuff on our soil. They can’t hide that. Surely he remembers-?’ Dean asks, incredulous.

‘Naw,’ he says, shaking his head, ‘they’d’ve wiped anything that happened before he was last in the tank. Anything past the last six months is gone. They let him keep his name, though.’

Dean whistles low. He looks at Bennie, eyes full of pity. Bennie pulls off his glove and stubs out the cigarette on his palm.

‘You got any other metal parts?’ Dean asks lightly, nodding at the arm.

‘Not that I know of.’ He dusts off the ash and pulls the glove back on. ‘Hey, you, ah… you got any motor oil?’

‘In need of a service?’ they grin at each other. ‘I’ll take you to the hardware store this afternoon.’

‘Thanks. For everything,’ Bennie says, a lump in his throat.

‘Don’t mention it.’

They stroll back to the cabin. Jill is showing Steve where to put garden beds, while Elijah and Emma unpack things from the boot of the car. Steve spots them and strides over, putting his hand on Bennie’s shoulder.

‘You ok?’ he asks softly.

‘I’m fine.’ Bennie smiles and nods at Jill. ‘You two bosom companions now?’

‘I think you made her feel bad,’ Steve laughs quietly. She gives Bennie a half-wave and smiles awkwardly.

He goes over to help Emma and Elijah. They’ve brought crockery and cutlery, bedding, fuel for the generator, more clothes – including old ones of Elijah’s – and a handful of books. Jill shows Steve how to operate the generator and they determine that the lights all work; even better, they now have hot water.

The guests leave again, echoing silence in their wake. Before they go, Elijah takes two more books from the glove compartment, pressing them into Steve’s hands. ‘I thought these might help,’ he says, then climbs into the car and drives away.

One is a very old scrapbook, full of yellowed clippings and photographs that have been folded and unfolded hundreds of times. The other is a biography: _Red Stars and Black Stripes – How America’s Greatest Hero Became Our Greatest Enemy_. The cover shows an old propaganda image of a man in a red, white and blue suit, a hammer and sickle angrily covering his face.

They sit on the rug and flick through the scrapbook together. They flip through rapidly, only reading the headlines. There are several photos of a man who looks a lot like Elijah, over a number of years and mostly in uniform, some of them above clippings about his military achievements.  These are scattered with articles about Captain Crimson. The scrapbook appears to be in reverse order, as though someone has tried to piece their memories back together. The articles about Captain Crimson are interspersed with speculation about Steve Rogers: _Government Denies Captain Crimson Sightings in Cuba_ ; _Former American Hero Steve Rogers Believed Seen in Berlin_ ; _Government Denies Steve Rogers Spotted on American Soil_. These are followed in the scrapbook by several obituaries. Then another headline makes them stop: _Captain America Dead? Steve Rogers  and Sidekick James ‘Bucky’ Barnes, Missing, Believed Dead After Failed Operation in Europe_. The headline is accompanied by two pictures: Steve, saluting proudly in his costume, and a smaller picture with the caption ‘Rogers’ childhood friend and fellow soldier, James ‘Bucky’ Barnes’.

Bennie points at the picture, voice high and quiet, almost childlike. ‘That’s me.’

The man in the picture has short, neat hair, fuller cheeks, a languid expression that he would never wear, but he still knows. He rubs the photograph, frowning.

‘That’s you,’ Steve says, voice full of wonder. He flicks back to the obituaries. A folded-up piece of paper falls out of the scrapbook and he unfolds it, revealing a magazine article published several years after the one with the pictures.

_ The Real American Hero: The True Story of the Death of James ‘Bucky’ Barnes _

_Declassified documents have finally revealed how Bucky, childhood friend and colleague of the traitor Steve Rogers, met his death. The shocking story of betrayal has been revealed for the first time thanks to government documents and exclusive interviews with the Howling Commandos, the special ops team led by Steve Rogers – or, as he was then known, Captain America._

_It has now been revealed that Bucky died on an operation with the Howling Commandos to intercept a Nazi train carrying the German scientist Arnim Zola. It is believed that Bucky discovered Rogers’ now infamous plan to defect to the USSR, and confronted him during the operation. Bucky tried to stop Rogers, but was killed when Rogers, his childhood friend, threw him from the train before disappearing-_

Steve drops the scrapbook. As one they have felt the rush of falling, the biting cold, the agony of falling and dying and waking and bleeding and not being dead and wanting to be dead and-

Bennie – Bucky – hurls himself to his feet and punches the stove chimney. His fist leaves a dent, each finger clearly defined. He drops to his knees, clutching his head, and reaches for Steve.

Steve grabs for him, pulls Bucky to him, wraps himself around him, holds him so, so tight. They both shake, gasping for air. ‘I tried- I tried to catch you- I couldn’t- you fell and I couldn’t-’

‘I was so _cold_ , Stevie-‘

‘Call me that again.’

‘Stevie.’

‘Mm. Buck.’ Steve buries his face in Bucky’s neck. ‘I should’ve caught you.’

‘Call me that again.’

‘Buck. Bucky.’

‘I’m Bucky.’

‘Yeah.’

‘I didn’t die trying to stop you. You didn’t kill me.’ He reaches for the article. ‘They got it wrong, we fell…’

‘I know, I was there.’ Steve pulls Bucky’s hand back before he can grasp it. ‘They got a lot of things wrong.’

‘I don’t- I can’t remember-‘ Bucky clenches his teeth in frustration. ‘I can’t remember anything else.’

‘I think-‘ Steve rubs his forehead against Bucky’s shoulder. ‘I’ve got some- they’re like flashes, little bits, then they’re gone.’

‘Tell me.’

‘It’s hard to tell when they’re from. There’s mud, and guns, men’s faces… but that could be from after…’ he sighs. ‘I think- I remember your face, though. You were- we’re camped out somewhere, you’re playing cards, got a cigarette dangling outta your mouth. That’s it.’

‘Was I winning?’

Steve frowns, trying to latch on to the memory. ‘No… no, you had this look, this sort of scowl you used to get. I think… yeah, I lost ‘cause I was too busy laughing at your stupid face.’

‘Aw, pal, that was my poker face!’ Bucky laughs. ‘You couldn’t figure out how the hell I’d beaten you.’

‘You asshole, I bet you were cheating.’ Steve laughs too, and they pull back from each other. ‘See, Buck? It’s all in there. We just have to get it out.’

‘Call me that again.’

‘I’ll say it as many times as you want, Buck.’ He cups Bucky’s face gently. ‘Bucky Barnes, childhood friend of Steve Rogers.’

‘You’re a sap,’ Bucky says, smiling, ‘and you’re bad at cards.’

‘Bucky, friend of Steve, card cheat.’ Steve falls back laughing as Bucky shoves him.

Dean’s truck rolls up outside. Bucky knows its sound by now. He stands, offering a hand to Steve and pulling him up.

‘You going somewhere?’ Steve asks.

‘Hell, I forgot, we’re going to the hardware store.’ Bucky stares at his arm for a moment, flexing the plates. ‘Yeah, I need to go. This thing’s in rough shape.’

‘Alright.’ Steve hugs Bucky tightly for a moment, then picks up one of the other books Emma brought. ‘I’ll see you in a bit, Bucky.’

‘Yeah.’

Bucky climbs into the truck, greeting Dean with a nod. ‘Steve didn’t want to come?’

‘He shouldn’t. Someone else might recognise him, and they probably won’t be as nice as you and Emma.’

‘Fair enough.’ Dean hums atonally as they drive back into town. He takes them to a big hardware store on the main street, and Bucky spends a lot of time furtively testing tools to make sure they’re the right size. He feels extremely satisfied to be able to purchase all of the equipment himself.

Now every time Dean calls him Bennie he feels a stab of discomfort. _Bucky Barnes_ rattles around his head like marbles on a wooden floor. He has a name. He is a someone – or he was. Bucky Barnes, American Hero. He feels the weight of the fourteen knives he is concealing, and contemplates. He – Bucky – is not convinced of the hero part. Not after the things his body has done. Still, the idea that Bucky Barnes, American Hero is buried somewhere inside his dangerous frame does manage to put a little spring in his step (or at the very least, make him walk in such a way that no one runs from him in horror).

Dean takes Bucky to the supermarket and recommends some foods he can buy that don’t require a refrigerator. Bucky sees the look he’s getting and tells him in a medium-level scary voice that under no circumstances are Dean or anyone he knows to purchase him and Steve any form of cold storage device. Dean promises, but does launch unprompted into a monologue about the time he bought an Esky. Bucky takes the hint and makes a mental note to allocate a portion of their budget for an Esky.

***

Steve tries to read the novel for a while, he honestly does, but the biography calls to him. He devours the first few chapters, stopping when it gets to his disappearance. As far as he can tell the information is all accurate; at least, it _feels_ true. He starts to remember bits and pieces. The book contains several glossy photographs, of himself, his parents, the streets he grew up on. Bucky is there too. A whole chapter is dedicated to their childhood friendship, another to how he rescued Bucky in the war, and two to how Bucky tried to stop him. He gets the impression that the author admires Bucky a great deal. Still, he feels like something is missing from the account of their relationship. It gnaws at him. He tries to excavate through the new pieces of memory, though the sensation is like clammy hands rooting around in his skull.

***

When Bucky finally gets home, Steve is in a heightened state of agitation. Bucky dumps the paper bags of groceries on the bench, on high alert. Dean’s headlamps send arcing shadows through the room as he drives away. Steve watches him go from the window, hands shaking.

‘You wanna tell me what the hell is going on?’ Bucky asks, fingers twitching over his knives.

‘I remembered some things. I want… can I try something?’ he looks nervously at Bucky. ‘Please, Buck?’

‘Whatever you want, pal.’

Steve closes the space between them in a few short strides. He stares at somewhere around Bucky’s chin for several minutes until Bucky finally opens his mouth to say something, then suddenly Steve tips Bucky’s chin up and leans down and presses their lips together.

Bucky freezes, tenses, then goes limp. Steve pulls back, eyebrows pulling together.

‘What the hell was that?’ Bucky finally chokes out.

‘Sorry, sorry, I thought- I remembered-‘ Steve stammers. He tries to take a step back but Bucky places a hand on his chest, frowning at it. He frowns at the hand on Steve’s chest for several long minutes, until Steve finally murmurs, ‘Can I try again?’

Bucky nods once and Steve cautiously lifts his chin with his finger again. He leans down, slowly, brushes their lips together, slowly, applies pressure, slowly. Bucky’s mouth curves upwards under his.

‘I remember this,’ Bucky whispers against his lips.

‘Mm,’ Steve replies, kissing the corner of Bucky’s mouth.

I bought spaghetti,’ Bucky says.

‘Ok,’ Steve replies.

‘And a pot.’

‘Mhm.’

‘I should cook.’

‘Hm-m.’

‘You’re hungry.’

‘… Yeah.’

‘You can tell me what you remember while I cook.’

‘Ok.’

They break apart, Steve groaning reluctantly. Bucky smirks at him and starts unpacking the groceries. He reads aloud the chapters of the biography while Bucky puts water on to boil and starts chopping onions. Bucky’s hands tremble as he works and several times he has to put the food down and pace in circles around the room when the memories threaten to overwhelm him. Finally they are able to eat their enormous bowls of spaghetti – he managed to find two heavily discounted Christmas salad bowls in the bargain bin – and Bucky takes out his new tools to service his arm. He is embarrassed to find a large amount of both dried blood and sawdust between the plates.

‘I need to look at your eye,’ he says, waving a screwdriver at Steve after he finishes cleaning his arm.

‘It’s fine.’

‘Like hell it is.’ He strides across to where Steve is sitting, looking at photos in the biography, and straddles his lap. ‘Sit still and I’ll show you a couple of things _I’ve_ remembered.’

‘Ok, Buck,’ Steve says with happy surprise.

Bucky carefully unscrews the protective covering of the eye. Red light spills across his face, casting nightmarish shadows. Steve sits ramrod straight, all expression disappearing from his face. Bucky wipes fluid from in and around the eye with a q-tip. He pushes gently on the eye socket and the eye’s components whir and spin. He unscrews a thin panel circling the red bulb.

‘I could remove most of this. If you wanted.’

Steve remains silent and expressionless. Bucky continues to unscrew components of the eye, laying them out on the ground. Finally there is nothing left but three wires dangling from an empty bone-and-metal socket. Bucky gets up and fetches his miniature soldering iron. Steve watches him, motionless and expressionless, following his movement with his one human eye. Bucky attaches the wires to a metal ring and reassembles the framework of the eye. When he is finished, Steve is left with a curve of metal that resembles a bad prosthesis, but does not glow red. Bucky leans back to admire his handiwork.  Steve stares blankly ahead.

‘All done, Stevie,’ Bucky says, to no response. ‘You ok, pal?’

The Eye complies with maintenance procedures. Maintenance procedures: complete. The Eye awaits further orders.

‘Aw, hell, Steve, don’t tell me that little thing was your brain,’ Bucky jokes, tone strained. ‘Come back to me, Stevie.’

Order given. Compliance required. Unsure how to proceed. _Come back to me_. Order unclear.

Bucky kisses Steve, a quick mashing of faces. Steve twitches. He tries again, with a little more technique this time, willing Steve to respond. Finally he feels hands tentatively grasp his waist, then encircle it.

‘There you are,’ he says. ‘You had me scared there for a minute.’

‘Maintenance is… suboptimal,’ Steve says, voice still flat.

‘Sorry, Stevie.’ Bucky presses their foreheads together.

‘I’m ok.’ He smiles, a twitching at the corners of his mouth. ‘Can we go to sleep?’

‘Yeah.’ Bucky clambers off his lap and pulls him to his feet.

Steve sleeps with his head in Bucky’s lap. Without the constant glow of his red eye, the night is truly black.

***

Steve wakes with a sore neck in the early morning. He pulls himself up to kiss Bucky on the cheek, then forces him to lie down and get some sleep. Bucky is reluctant but as soon as he lies down his eyes slam shut and his breath steadies.

Steve brews coffee in the saucepan and pours some into a chipped Halloween mug. He walks around the outside of the cabin and does two laps of the tree line perimeter. He stares at the rusted truck, sipping his coffee, until the mug is empty and his fingers itch.

Bucky wakes a little while later to a crash and loud swearing from outside. _Steve_. He leaps over the loft railing to the floor and is out the door in three strides, hands full of weapons.

‘Aw, jeez, I didn’t mean to wake you,’ Steve says, waving. ‘The hood-prop broke.’ He rubs the back of his head, putting streaks of engine grease through his dyed hair.

Bucky rolls his eyes and puts the knives away. He opens the hood and peers in. ‘The hell you been doin’ in here, pal?’

‘I thought I knew how to fix cars,’ Steve says sheepishly, ‘but I think I only know how to hotwire one.’

‘This is a goddamn mess,’ Bucky groans.

‘I remembered something about working in a garage.’

Bucky frowns. Something about that sounds familiar. ‘You sure you’re not remembering getting fired from working in a garage?’

‘No, I- aw, hell, that was you. I did the books.’ He shakes his head, smiling at his feet. ‘It was when we were in high school. I helped the mechanic – Big George, he was called – with his numbers and you helped fix the cars.’

‘I don’t remember it,’ Bucky says.

‘I’d watch you working when George wasn’t looking. You’d always wear a white singlet and get all covered in grease. It was-‘ Steve turns pink.

‘Well now you’re covered in grease. Go take a shower.’

A grin creeps wide across Steve’s face. Bucky takes a step back and bumps into the truck. Steve is on him in a flash, grabbing his face with both hands, smearing his lips his grease and kisses.

‘Asshole,’ he finally gasps when Steve pulls back to take a breather.

‘’Go take a shower’,’ Steve imitates mockingly. He ducks Bucky’s swing and jogs back to the cabin.

The shower is already running when Bucky gets back inside. He turns on the tap in the kitchen, which elicits more swearing from the direction of the bathroom. He calmly spends a minute washing his face before turning the tap off again. Steve finally emerges several minutes later, scrubbed clean and glowering. Bucky serves him a stack of toast and eggs and they make faces at each other while they eat.

‘You should get more sleep,’ Steve says later while they’re washing the dishes. He rubs his thumb in the dark circle under Bucky’s eye.

‘I would if I trusted you to keep watch. Besides, I just slept for three hours.’

‘Don’t give me that,’ Steve says, flicking water at him. ‘You’ll lose your job if you fall asleep on the lumber.’

‘I don’t like to sleep,’ Bucky murmurs flatly. ‘I worry… that I won’t wake up. Or that I will wake up, in the tank, or in the chair.’

‘I’ll stay with you. You can hold my hand.’

‘I don’t know if that’s enough.’ Steve looks hurt and Bucky sighs. ‘I’ll try and take a nap, ok? You can talk to me, tell me about something nice you can remember.’

‘Ok.’

He lies on the mattress and Steve sits against the wall, their hands entwined.

‘I remember…’ Steve begins softly. He rubs his thumb in soft circles on the back of Bucky’s hand. ‘I remember being small, a hot summer, sucking on ice chips. I remember lying on a fire escape with you, sweaty, listening to a baseball game on the radio. Going to a baseball game and you catching the ball and giving it to me. Lying with you in a tent in France, holding each other to keep warm. Seeing you in the tank and wanting to climb in with you. Waking up in the tank and looking for you. You giving me socks for Christmas, nice thick ones, ‘cause I needed ‘em.’

‘That’s a terrible gift,’ Bucky murmurs.

‘No, no, it was good. I got you… a drawing. A portrait that I did of you, lying on the fire escape in your johns.’ He shakes his head and laughs softly. ‘I was so nervous to give it you and when you opened it you went all quiet. I was terrified, I thought I’d fucked up so bad… you walked out the door and disappeared for three hours and I thought you’d gone for good. Then suddenly you climbed back through the window with your fists full of mistletoe and kissed me.’

‘You know how hard that was to find?’ Bucky laughs, ‘I spent the first hour thinking I was imagining things and the next two looking for fucking mistletoe. I came in the fire escape ‘cause I nicked it from the back door of a club and had to run home again.’

‘That’s the happiest memory I got,’ Steve says warmly.

‘Good work, pal, that’s a real nice one.’

‘Mm. Think you can sleep now?’

‘Yeah, I reckon so.’

‘Good.’

He does fall asleep, and deeply. When he wakes he is in the chair, he cannot move, he can’t see Steve, they’re shining lights in his eyes and putting needles in his brain and there are metal straps across his chest, cold and heavy, and he tries to scream but his mouth won’t open.

He screws his eyes shut against the light and the pain and this time when he opens them Steve is there, face inches from his, but he is dead, skin peeling back from his skull to reveal shining red wetness underneath. He tries to recoil but he still cannot move, not even to yell, and Steve’s corpse is shaking him awake and he bolts up and leaps from the loft and runs out the door, sprints across the yard and into the trees and up into the branches.

He clings to the trunk and breathes deep, shaky breaths. The scent of pine is soothing and the roughness of the bark is reassuring under his palm. There is a rustling noise and Steve’s head appears through the branches. He pulls himself up to sit beside Bucky, looking worried. Bucky reaches for him, grabs his cheek and pulls and tugs. The skin appears intact and living.

‘This is real?’ he asks.

‘Yeah, Buck. It’s real.’ Steve lets out a long breath. ‘You really freaked me out there, pal.’

‘Sleeping is suboptimal,’ he replies wryly.

‘Yeah, I can see that.’ Steve pulls a pine needle out of Bucky’s hair. ‘We’re gonna have to fix it.’

‘It’s fine. It’s not a problem.’

Steve sighs. ‘You wanna come down now?’

‘Ok.’

They climb out of the tree. Despite everything, Bucky has managed to sleep almost the whole day; the sun is setting. Steve cooks spaghetti  and they eat it on the balcony, watching the sky turn pale gold then orange then grey. The moon is a cold sliver resting on the trees like a slender boat on the ocean. The wind picks up, blowing pine needles across the yard. They stand hip to hip, heads together, counting the emerging stars until the wind sends clouds scudding across the sky and it starts to rain softly.

They sit in front of the dying fire, Bucky read aloud from one of the paperbacks Emma gave them – a pulpy story about cowboys – until Steve huffs in frustration and pulls him onto his lap.

‘Is there a problem?’ Bucky asks teasingly, still holding the book in front of him like a school marm reading sums.

‘I just keep thinking about…’ Steve blushes slightly and buries his face in Bucky’s chest.

‘About what, pal? I’m readin’ here.’

‘Last night, you… said you’d remembered some stuff,’ he says, voice muffled by Bucky’s shirt. ‘But then I freaked out and you never got to… tell me about it.’

‘You want me to tell you about it?’ Bucky repeats, voice husky. He puts the book down and Steve nods.

‘Well I don’t remember exactly…’ he forces Steve’s face up and gives him a deep, lingering kiss. ‘Only bits and pieces… are you sure you want me to tell you?’

‘Please,’ Steve moans.

Bucky wriggles his hips a little and brushes his lips under Steve’s ear. The response is delightful, so he does it again.

‘Buck…’

‘Sh, they’ll hear us,’ he whispers, which makes Steve jerk in surprise then kiss him forcefully.

Bucky keeps kissing him and rocking his hips and he makes happy little noises that send fire burning across Bucky’s skin. Finally he can’t take it. Steve bends his knees and grasps Bucky’s thighs and, using the wall for support, pushes himself to his feet. Bucky wraps his legs around his waist and they stumble for the ladder. They fall against it, laughing.

‘Don’t keep watch tonight,’ Steve murmurs into the spot under Bucky’s ear.

‘I have to,’ Bucky gasps as Steve’s fingers brush against the top of his waistband.

‘Don’t,’ Steve whispers, brushing his lips from ear to clavicle.

‘I have… mm…’ he pushes his fingers through Steve’s hair, grabbing and tugging gently. Steve looks up, eyes slightly glassy. ‘Ok.’

‘Ok?’ Steve grins, then lifts Bucky by the waist and starts pushing him up the ladder.

They sprawl on the mattress, tangled in each other. They kiss sloppily for a few minutes, then Bucky pushes Steve down on his back with a wicked look in his eye. Steve tries to say something in protest but he presses a finger to his lips. Bucky pulls the edge of Steve’s shirt up to his chest and circles his tongue lightly around a nipple. Steve raises a sceptical eyebrow and Bucky starts trailing kisses down his ribcage. He shuffles down the mattress until his torso is between Steve’s thighs, kissing lower and lower until he reaches Steve’s fly. Steve watches, eyes wide, as Bucky undoes his button and unzips his pants with is teeth.

‘Jesus, Bucky,’ he chokes out, ‘wish I could remember this.’

‘I’m improvising a little,’ Bucky replies, then licks him, long and lazy.

Steve’s senses go haywire and he tangles his fingers in Bucky’s hair. Bucky licks him again, takes him in his mouth, makes Steve moan, he does _things_ with his tongue and Steve gasps, groans, bucks and arches and comes with a shuddering gasp. Bucky slides up and places his head over Steve’s heart until its beating returns to a steady rhythm and the two of them fall easily into sleep.

***

This is the rhythm they find: Bucky works at the sawmill and Steve stays in the cabin, gardening and drawing and tinkering. They spend time with Dean and Emma and Elijah and Jill, and sometimes other trustworthy friends. Bucky gets the truck working so they can take trips into town on their own. He saves up and purchases a complicated security system with its own generator. Steve takes up beekeeping. The cabin becomes a home. Months stretch into years. They are content, and happy, and sometimes they are able to trick themselves into feeling safe. But they are not.

***

The foreman at the mill trusts Bucky. He sends him to Tulsa to pick up some machine parts and close a business deal. They find him. A woman slides into the cabin of the truck and smiles at him, real pretty, and says _portal stiletto hangar_ and everything goes black as hands open the driver side door and grab him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I didn't spent nearly enough time editing this chapter BUT! everything in my life is an arse! and I need validation! SO! My apologies.
> 
> I'm nervous about this chapter so any feedback is appreciated! Thank you darlings.


	4. Part Three: This Time Removed

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Content warning this chapter for body horror, gore, violence, PTSD, forced rectal feeding. This chapter also features a plane crash. It was written before the Chapecoense crash and I felt it important to mention in case anyone has been particularly affected by that accident. As always, please let me know if there are any other content warnings/triggers you would like to know about.
> 
> Apologies again for the terrible google translate Russian.

_BOULDER, 1990_

Every time Bucky is gone it makes Steve crazy. The two day trip is the longest they’ve been apart and he repaints the entire cabin, builds a second chicken coop, disassembles and reassembles the bike he’s been trying to repair, and cooks enough food to feed a small army. When Bucky doesn’t come home at the end of the second day he climbs on the roof and sits there all night, waiting for headlamps to come through the trees. The sun creeps agonisingly into the sky and he knows something is wrong.

Steve packs a bag and sprints the miles from their cabin to Emma and Dean’s house and pounds on the door. Emma answers in her dressing gown, a shotgun pointed in his face. She drops it as soon as she sees who it is, going pale.

‘What is it? What’s happened?’

‘I don’t know. It’s Buck. He never came back last night.’ Steve paces in circles, tugging his hair. ‘I think- what if they found him?’

‘It’s been five years, you really think they’re still after you?’

‘You don’t know what we’re capable of,’ he says darkly. ‘They won’t ever have stopped looking.’

‘Ok. Alright. What do you need?’ She ushers him inside.

‘I need a car.’

‘I’ll call Elijah and see if you can borrow his. You sit tight.’ She disappears into the kitchen, leaving Steve pacing in the hall.

Dean emerges, rubbing his eyes. ‘What the hell is going on?’

‘Bucky is gone.’

Something in his tone makes Dean stop dead. His face falls. ‘You think-?’

‘Yeah.’

‘He’s on the way,’ Emma says, re-emerging from the kitchen.

‘Thanks.’

‘I’ll put some food together. Dean can take the day off and come with you, right honey?’

‘No.’ Steve shakes his head firmly. ‘It’s too dangerous. If they found us before we found them, they’d kill you instantly.’

‘We just want to help,’ Dean says sympathetically.

‘You’ve done… so, so much. For both of us. Ever since we got here.’ Steve hugs them both. ‘We can never repay you for that. But this is… if they’ve- there’s nothing you can do.’

Elijah pulls up outside and hands Steve the keys without a word. Steve clasps his shoulders then climbs into the driver’s seat and peels away from the curb. He sticks to the speed limit as much as he can out of respect for Elijah’s job, but on the highway fear takes over and he presses the pedal to the floor.

He gets to Tulsa in just under seven hours, by which time the road is busy and his heart is thumping so hard in his chest that it’s almost painful. He goes straight to the hotel where Bucky was staying. The clerk shakes her head and says his girlfriend checked him out last night. No, she isn’t sure where they were headed. They drove separately though.

Steve heads to the part of town where Bucky was meant to be picking up the equipment. Yes, they remember him. Yes, he picked up the packages. No, he didn’t show up for his other appointment. No, he didn’t call to say why, and you can tell him that’s the last of their business his boss will be seeing. No, they’ve got no idea where he went, just that they recommended him a burger joint for dinner and that was the last they saw of him, the ingrate.

He goes to the burger joint. None of the staff were working that night, but if he waits around Jesse will be starting in an hour and he was there, but he’ll have to order something. He eats three cheeseburgers and tries to resist the urge to punch holes in the wall; he doesn’t want to get anyone fired and he doesn’t want to get kicked out either.

‘You asking for me?’ Jesse is about seventeen, pretty, with smooth brown skin, long curls and thick eyelashes.

‘My, ah, my friend. He came here night before last, or said he would. Hair about as long as yours, only straight, about so high.’ He gestures. ‘Do you remember him?’

‘Real good-looking guy with the piece of shit truck?’ Jesse frowns. ‘Yeah, I remember. You his ‘friend’ huh?’

‘Yeah. He was supposed to get back last night, but he didn’t.’

‘Seems like he had a lot of ‘friends’.’ He crosses his arms.

‘What do you mean?’ Steve looks at him pleadingly. ‘Please.’

‘You really just looking out for him?’ Jesse gives him a cool, scrutinising look, then sits. ‘Ok, fine. He ate here. There was some chick in the booth over there-‘ he points ‘-who got real excited when he came in, whipped out a phone and started talking a million miles an hour into it. I thought maybe he was famous or something, so I was extra nice. Anyway, he left me a big tip and went round the corner. I took out the garbage just to see what sort of car he had and it was that shitty brown thing, so I thought, hey, maybe he’s not famous, maybe he’s a criminal or something.’

Steve has gone cold. His chest feels tight and his voice is flat and low when he asks, ‘Did you see anything after that?’

‘Yeah. Yeah, he got in the truck and the chick appeared out of nowhere and climbed in the other side. I dunno what happened but suddenly there were all these guys there in these black outfits and they pulled him out of the truck. I didn’t see what happened after.’ He shrugs.

‘Did you tell anyone else? Did you report it?’ Steve asks urgently.

‘Nah. I don’t want the cops all over me. Besides, they wouldn’t believe me.’ He shrugs again, apologetic. ‘I hope you find him.’

Steve leaves a crumpled handful of tens on the table and walks out. He goes to the back of the building and stands in the alley, looking out at where Bucky must have parked. Then he punches the wall, over and over, until there’s a pile of brick dust at his feet and his knuckles are a shredded mess.

He calms himself forcibly, shoves his hands in his pockets, and starts peering around where the truck would have been. There’s a telltale slick of oil on the ground where it would have sat, but that’s the only sign that Bucky was ever there. No sign of a struggle, no footprints.

He tries to access memories, figure out where the nearest HYDRA base would be, but he knows it has been so long that they may have moved. He purchases a map of Tulsa at a gas station and drives to the centre of the city, trying to figure out the most likely location of their hideout.

A bus drives by, its side splashed with an advertisement for the Tulsa leg of the Stark Industries New Decade Expo. Steve makes for the Exhibition Centre.

He is looking for a way to sneak in without a ticket when he feels a small hand loop his wrist and something hard pressing into his ribs.

‘There you are, darling,’ a voice purrs, ‘I’ve been looking for you everywhere.’

He could take her gun and snap her neck in half a second but he looks down and sees red hair, a familiar smile, is suddenly back in a crowded ballroom dancing with a beautiful girl while thousands of eyes watch on. He lets her lead him, down the street and into the back of an empty building.

‘ты их, или ваш?’ she asks quietly.

‘мина и его,’ he replies fiercely.

‘And your plan is to just stroll into the viper’s nest?’ she smiles at him and his blood turns to ice.

‘They’re in town for Stark, right?’

‘Of course. Vermin follow him everywhere.’

‘Is that why you’re here?’ he asks.

‘Ouch.’ She smiles, slightly warmer this time. ‘Yes, that’s why.’

‘Do you know where they’ve taken him?’

‘No.’ Her smile slips a little. ‘They bundled him straight onto a charter plane. He could be anywhere by now.’

Steve exhales in a rush and drops into a crouch, head in his hands. ‘How the hell do you know they put him in a plane?’

‘I’ve been tapping the airport cameras for when my target arrives. I saw them take him.’ She shrugs. ‘I figured you probably wouldn’t be too far behind.’

‘Are you here to take me too?’ he asks, resigned.

‘You’ve known since I shot you in the desert that I don’t work for them anymore.’ She nudges him with her foot. ‘Let me wrap up what I’m doing here. Then I’ll help you find him.’

‘Why would you want to help me?’

‘Same reason I shot you: I owe you both a debt.’ She grins. ‘Besides, boys as pretty as you two shouldn’t be locked away from the world.’

‘Ok, alright, how long is your work going to take?’ He stands shakily. ‘I’m not waiting around.’

‘Just sit tight here for a couple of hours. I’ll… _advance my schedule_ a little.’ She goes to leave, then pauses. ‘And, ah, stay away from the windows. It’ll be a miracle if they haven’t spotted you already.’

She disappears out the door. Steve sits on a dusty countertop and thoroughly cleans his guns and sharpens his knives. He does this three times, interspersed with pacing around the building and doing several sets of push- and sit-ups. Finally he hears a vehicle park outside the redhead pops her head through the door.

‘Come on, then.’

They climb into her car, a red Lotus Esprit, and she drives slowly past the Exhibition Centre. Steve finds his bag squashed under his seat.

‘That, ah, it wasn’t my car. I should really let its owner know-‘ he starts awkwardly.

‘I took care of it.’ She eases them onto the expressway. ‘I called in a favour, got someone to drop it off.’

‘Thanks.’

‘Don’t mention it.’

‘You know where we live, then?’

‘Do you really want the answers to that line of questioning?’

They drive in silence for a few minutes, then Steve finally says, ‘Mind telling me where the hell we’re going?’

‘The airport, obviously.’

‘I don’t think they’ll let me fly.’

‘That’s why you’re going to stay with the car.’ He sighs and she gives him a sympathetic look. ‘Sorry.’

She grabs a folder out of the glove compartment and leaves. This time she’s only gone twenty minutes, but it’s long enough that Steve is feeling highly claustrophobic. He wants to jog around the parking lot, but there could be eyes everywhere. She returns and tosses another folder into his lap.

‘What’s this?’

‘Flight plan. They went to JFK.’ She tears out of the parking lot. ‘There’s no point trying to catch up with them, but we can follow their trail.’

‘We’re going to drive there?’ Steve’s hands start to shake and he presses his head back into the seat. ‘Do you have any idea what they could be doing to him right now?’

‘Some.’ Her mouth sets in a grim line. ‘Just remember that he’s not dead.’

‘He’ll wish he was.’ He thumps the door and the window shatters, scattering glass all over the road.

‘Hey, asshole, don’t make me regret helping you,’ she says, but he thinks she probably doesn’t mean it.

‘Sorry, sorry. We just- it’s the other side of the country.’ He slouches forward, pressing his hands into his eye sockets. ‘I can’t believe I let this happen.’

‘Did you really think it wouldn’t happen eventually?’ They pull into the flow of traffic on route 44. ‘I mean, you had a good run, but you were lucky.’

‘Yeah,’ he says resignedly, ‘you’re right. We got stupid.’

‘Don’t beat yourself up, Steve.’

‘I, uh, I don’t remember your name.’

‘Natasha. But you do remember _me_ , right?’ She glances sideways at him.

‘Yeah. A little.’

‘Good.’

***

_Bucky opens his eyes and he is in the chair. He is in the chair and there are cold metal bars constricting his chest and his arms. He is in the chair and a man leans in, smiling all teeth, and says ‘Good to see you again, soldier’. He is in the chair and he squeezes his eyes shut and opens them again and he’s still in the chair and the man with the teeth steps back and nods and someone forces a plastic guard between his teeth and the chair tilts back and he whimpers around the guard and they switch it on and it hurts, it hurts and he doesn’t know where Steve is and he hopes Steve is safe and his name is Bucky Barnes, James Bucky Buchanan Barnes, Bucky Barnes, his name is Bucky I’m Bucky I’m Bucky I’m Steve’s and I’m Bucky and it hurts it hurts so much his name is Bucky but it hurts, it hurts, it hurts, and it can’t remember its name._

***

Steve thought New York would be like coming home, but the Empire State Building is just another part of the skyline now. They skirt the edge of Brooklyn and memories he’d almost lost flutter at the edges of his mind, but nothing fixes. It’s early afternoon when they get to the airport. Steve refuses to sit in the car another minute so Natasha buys him an NYC baseball cap and a pair of sunglasses and he hunches, trying to be inconspicuous.

The metal detectors present an immediate problem; Steve alone is carrying approximately seventeen weapons, not counting the ones in his bag. Natasha takes his hand and casually pulls him behind a sports team’s luggage trolley. They walk beside it a few yards, then Natasha stops and leans against a door, playing with Steve’s lapels and giggling. He is thoroughly confused until he hears a click and she slides a bobby pin into her hair. Natasha leads them through a service tunnel and up a flight of stairs. They slip through another door and into the terminal.

‘You do this a lot?’ Steve guesses.

‘Oh, sure. I make an excellent flight attendant. Very attentive.’ She leads him through the terminal, still holding his hand, to the staff lounge.

‘Natalie! Long time, no see,’ the receptionist says. They air-kiss and he waves at Steve. ‘Who’s this, then?’

‘He’s my fiancé,’ she says in a gushy voice that Steve finds slightly alarming. ‘Isn’t the rock _huge_?’

‘Where the hell did you get that?’ Steve mouths at her. She laughs and hisses _shutup_ at him through her teeth as she shows off the ring.

‘Oh, honey, that’s gorgeous! I’m so happy for you,’ the receptionist says with clearly fake enthusiasm, ‘but you know I can’t let you both in here.’

‘Please, darling? Just this once?’ She does some kind of appalling pleading manoeuvre involving her breasts and her eyelashes that makes Steve go a bit pink. ‘Only I want to show him where I work and everything, you know?’

‘Oh, alright. Straight in and out, then,’ he says with a wink, waving them in with furtive little motions.

‘Thanks, darling,’ Natasha simpers, dragging Steve into the lounge.

‘Well, that was… something,’ Steve mumbles. ‘I think you just broke his heart.’

‘That’ll happen.’ She jabs him painfully in the ribs. ‘Did anyone ever tell you you’re a terrible actor?’

‘Not that I can recall,’ he jokes drily.

‘Natalie?’ a man at the bar in a SECURITY cap says. The colour drains from his face.

‘Heston.’ She slides onto a stool next to him.

‘I thought I’d seen the back of you,’ he says ruefully.

‘Bad luck, sweetheart,’ she purrs. ‘I need information.’

‘Of course you do. Look, it’s a miracle I haven’t been fired ‘cause of you already.’ He tries to draw himself up. ‘So why don’t you just leave me alone?’

‘Heston, comrade,’ she places a hand on his knee and the colour rushes back to his face, ‘you know you’re going to give me what I want.’

‘Fine. Fine. But this is the last time,’ he says with the determination of someone who has said that many times before. ‘What do you want?’

‘A charter plane flew here from Tulsa a couple of days ago,’ she says, pulling the folder out of her jacket, ‘and we need to know what happened to it and everyone on board after that.’

‘We?’ he looks at Steve for the first time. ‘Fucking hell, you brought a friend?’

‘Don’t worry about him.’ She slides her hand a little further up his thigh and he swallows. ‘You’re going to get me what I need, right?’

‘Yes, m-ma’am,’ he stutters, and gestures for them to follow him.

Heston gives them each a cap and a black jacket which say SECURITY and leads them back across to the other side of the terminal. They leave the main building and take a truck across to a smaller structure. Heston lets them inside, to a room full of screens. He checks through the folder and pulls a VHS tape off the shelf.

‘That’s the plane landing,’ he says, pointing. ‘I’ll speed it up a bit.’

People get out of the plane, wheeling something on a trolley. Heston follows their progression through the airport, swapping tapes and fast-forwarding in a process that takes an agonisingly long time. The people avoid the main terminal, taking the trolley through docks and loading bays and onto another charter plane, a large jet this time. The trolley is only clear for a moment of footage.

‘That’s a body bag,’ Steve says, pulse spiking.

‘He’s not dead,’ Natasha murmurs, ‘they’ll have him unconscious. It’s easier to transport a dead guy than an unconscious one.’

Heston pulls up the flight log and squints at the screen. ‘According to our records, that jet was destined for… Madrid, Spain.’

Steve puts his fist through a monitor.

Natasha hurriedly leads him back through the airport and out to the car park, where he beats the crap out of a parking meter. She makes him get into the car with a stern look and starts driving.

‘Where are we going? We have to get to the dock, we can’t get to Madrid this way,’ Steve says as she starts heading out of the city.

‘You can’t swim to Spain, Steve. I don’t care how much you work out,’ she replies drily.

‘We can get on a ship, we-‘

‘It’s too late for that. We’re already days behind.’ She takes an exit, too fast, the car fishtailing a little. ‘We need a plan.’

‘My plan is to find Bucky.’

‘A _detailed_ plan.’

She drives them out of the city, barely keeping to speed limits, taking back roads upstate. She finally slows in a small, nondescript town, pulling up outside a neat little house on a back street.

‘Where are we?’ he asks hollowly.

‘Safe house. Wait here and don’t break anything.’  She leaves again and comes back with three pizzas and a bottle of vodka.

‘Does that do anything for you?’ he asks curiously, nodding at the vodka.

‘No, but I like the taste.’ She pours them each a glass and slugs hers back in one go. She stares at him until he eats.

‘We’ll get him back,’ she says confidently, when the pizzas are all but gone. ‘It will take time, and planning, but I have contacts.’

‘This is HYDRA we’re talking about. I don’t know if your ‘contacts’ will be enough. How do you even know you can trust them?’

‘I don’t trust anybody,’ she says with a twitch of a smile.

‘So, what, I sit around here while you go off, and I’m supposed to just trust that you’re looking for him?’

‘You’re coming with me, don’t worry. But you’ll have to earn your keep.’ She smiles.

‘Doing what, exactly?’

‘The same thing I do.’

‘Which is…?’

‘Assassinations, mostly.’

Steve recoils. ‘I’m done with that.’

‘Trust me, killing for money is very different to killing because they guy with his fingers in his brain told you to,’ she says, tone deceptively light.

‘I think I’d rather be able to say I did it only because I didn’t have the choice.’

‘Well, your choice is this: work with me and take advantages of my resources, or try and find your friend on your own.’ She raises an eyebrow. ‘Don’t forget, you’re still a wanted man. The Cold War may be practically over, but the government would still love to put you in its deepest, darkest prison.’

‘Fine.’

‘Good.’ She smiles smugly.

***

They work for stretches of months at a time without hearing a single thing. Occasionally they stumble on the right person, who gives them a scrap of information about secret bases with weird power fluctuations or mysterious deaths that no one can explain. They have to tread carefully, so that Steve is not discovered and their questions don’t find their way to the wrong ears. It is agonising; every day Steve feels like another piece of his soul has been peeled away.

***

A year after Bucky was taken, Steve unfolds a newspaper and the front page causes him to stop breathing for a moment. The headline leaps at him, thick black letters bleeding into his mind. _Howard Stark, Wife, Killed in Car Accident._ Natasha reads over his shoulder.

‘You think it was him, don’t you?’ she murmurs.

‘It has to be. It has us written all over it.’ His hands tremble, making the paper rustle. ‘That means he’s here.’

‘No, Steve. He’ll be miles away by now.’

‘This is the first sign we’ve had of him in a year!’

‘We don’t know for sure that it _is_ him-‘

‘I know. I’m sure.’ She presses her mouth into a line, regarding him coolly. ‘Don’t look at me like that. Bucky and me, we’re… when they had us both, it was like we thought with the same mind. We’re connected.’

‘They’ll be crawling all over this one. We won’t be able to get anywhere near it. Stark’s death, it’s… a big deal.’

‘I know. He was a friend too, once.’ Steve laughs darkly. ‘HYDRA’s taken everything from me.’

‘I’m sorry, Steve,’ she says, like she means it.

***

Steve goes to Howard Stark’s funeral, watching from a distance as the man who was once a friend is put in the ground. He wears a big, black coat, dark glasses, a wide-brimmed hat pulled down low; he is not the only one. The funeral is thick with friends and colleagues who don’t want their presence known, among the politicians and celebrities performing their grief for the cameras. Steve sees the few remaining members of the Howling Commandos, sitting straight-backed in a row, and he aches to be with them.

Mourners trickle out of the cemetery until there are three figures left: Stark’s son Tony, who arrived late and sipped often and openly from a flask; an older woman in a black veil; and Steve. He watches from a distance as Tony wipes a fist across his eyes, pours a nip from the flask onto the fresh-turned earth and staggers away. He moves silently to sit beside the woman.

‘I thought you might come,’ she says, voice still firm.

‘Are you going to bring me in?’

‘I’m afraid I’m retired now. I couldn’t, even if I wanted to.’ She turns to him, and he can see her eyes shining through the veil. ‘What happened, Steve? Tell me the truth.’

‘They took us. Tortured us, brainwashed us.’ He removes his sunglasses. ‘I didn’t have a choice.’

‘I’m sorry I never found you.’ She reaches out, strokes the scarring around his metal eye. ‘I couldn’t believe it, when they said you’d defected. Then we started getting reports, and… I hated you, for years.’

‘That’s understandable.’ He smiles ruefully.

‘Then you tried to kill me in Copenhagen…’

‘You were never a target.’

‘Still. But you _remembered_ me, I could see that you were remembering.’ She cups his face in her hand. ‘I thought again that maybe it wasn’t really true after all. Then when Captain Crimson disappeared a few years ago, well, I hoped you’d been able to escape.’

‘We did. Me and Bucky, we had a life together.’

‘Bucky?’ She smiles. ‘I’m glad you still have him, despite everything.’

‘They took him again. Last year.’ He considers telling her for a moment, about Howard, but something stops him. ‘I’ve been looking, but…’

‘Oh, Steve, I’m sorry.’

‘So am I.’

‘If there’s anything I can do…’

‘I can’t ask that of you, Peggy.’ He smiles tightly and takes her hand. ‘It’s good to see you.’

‘Don’t be a stranger,’ she replies.

He raises her veil and kisses her cheek. Her skin is soft and papery. Tears run down his cheek as he walks away, leaving her alone among the graves.

***

They chase dead ends and rumours, shadows and ghosts. Steve feels himself turning hard again, becoming a machine. They take jobs, usually together but sometimes separate. Natasha has an ever-changing slew of safe houses and sports cars and fake passports. Sometimes they sleep together, when Natasha claims to be bored and Steve needs to feel something. It is an easy coupling, an ideal partnership. They work, they search, they kill, they fuck, and it drags on and on and on.

***

_NEW YORK, 1997_

It is six more years before a mission and sheer dumb luck takes them to New York and Steve is tasked with sweeping a building and he accidentally bumps into a HYDRA agent doing the same thing. He incapacitates her and carries her back to where he and Natasha have holed up. She is unwilling to talk at first, but then she recognises Steve.

‘They’re going to kill me either way, so you might as well know,’ she says, laughing bitterly. ‘We’ve got a job for the Winter Soldier tomorrow. The building is the drop-off point. But you’ll never get to him. The place will be crawling with our people.’

‘She’s bluffing,’ Natasha says.

‘How do you know?’

‘I know.’

‘Ok. Knock her out and leave her here, her people won’t find her for a couple of days.’

‘I’m gonna kill her.’

‘Don’t kill her.’

‘Please don’t kill me.’

‘I’m gonna do it.’

‘Nat…’

‘Fine. You’re no fun.’

Natasha drugs the HYDRA agent and they move themselves to a 24-hour internet café with full view of the drop site. Their plan is rushed, and crude, and she tries to talk him out of it but there’s no way in hell he’s letting Bucky go when he’s so damn close.

Natasha displays a proficiency for _Doom II_ that keeps the café owner from getting annoyed at their presence. They drink a great deal of coffee and eat a lot of stale pastries and weirdly soggy cheese sandwiches. Finally a van pulls up at the side of the building and they watch people climb out: five HYDRA agents, and Bucky.

Steve’s heart leaps in his chest. He wants to sprint across the road, but Natasha stops him with a look. Natasha has set up cameras through the building and hooked their feed to the computer in the internet café. They watch the agents take up position throughout the building. Bucky sits at a window on the second floor and starts assembling a rifle.

They wait a few minutes, then she strolls across the street to the driver’s side of the van and he strides to the building entrance.

A HYDRA agent blocks his path. ‘Sorry, man, building’s closed.’

‘That’s impossible, I just rented the loft.’

‘What? The hell you did.’

‘I did, look, I’ve got the keys right here-‘ Steve reaches into his jacket. The man leans forward and Steve pulls out his fist and cracks him across the bridge of his nose. He catches the unconscious agent and drags him into the building, leaving him propped against the interior wall.

Despite his size he moves with complete silence. The agents are overly confident and not expecting an attack. He drops them easily. In under two minutes he stands behind Bucky, watching him fit the rifle together. ‘Sorry,’ he whispers, raising his gun.

Bucky’s head whips around at the same moment Steve fires. The tranquiliser hits him in the neck, just below the ear. He swats at it and leaps to his feet, lunging at Steve.

 _For a moment it thinks it is looking in the mirror for the first time in a long time: isn’t that its face? But no, it doesn’t look like that anymore. This is someone new. A threat: the body has been compromised. Mission at risk. Eliminate target_.

‘Bucky, it’s me,’ Steve says, as one flesh hand and one metal wraps around his throat.

‘I have no idea who you are,’ Bucky growls. His grip slackens and he looks confused. He drops and Steve catches him and hoists him onto his back.

Natasha has brought the van around to the side entrance. Steve loads Bucky into the back and drags the unconscious driver into the building. Natasha restarts the van and starts driving slowly out of the city. Steve applies several sets of thick, padded restraints to Bucky’s arms and legs. Reluctantly, at Natasha’s insistence, he places a bag over his head. He sits on the floor of the van, leaning Bucky back against his chest, arms around him.

They are barely out of Greenwich when Bucky starts to wake. Steve injects him with another dose of tranquiliser. Bucky writhes violently and goes still.

He doses him one more time, then they agree to let it wear off. They don’t know if they can become immune to it. Steve feels Bucky wake, though he stays perfectly still.

‘You’re safe, Bucky,’ he says softly. ‘Mission complete.’

‘Negative,’ Bucky replies, voice muffled by the bag. ‘Target not eliminated.’

‘The mission parameters changed.’ Steve presses his face into the top of the bag, smelling Bucky through the cloth. ‘Just be good for me, ok Buck? I don’t wanna drug you again. Please don’t make me.’

_***_

_It opens its eyes and the world is black. It is restrained. It is in a vehicle. This is not unusual. It remembers being compromised. A man shot it and called it… Bucky? That doesn’t seem like a name. it flexes slightly, counting restraints. Two tethering the ankles together, three on the wrists. Chain in padding. The padding is unusual; it suggests a gentleness that is incompatible with standard treatment procedures. There are additional restraints: not metal or cord. Organic? Yes: arms, around its trunk, a leg on each side. It hears the man’s voice again, responds, is responded to. An order is given: be good. It is unsure how to comply. Is this man a handler? If so, handler transference highly unusual. Possible breach of protocol. It maintains belief in mission compromise. The man applies lips to the top of its head. Stop that. What is that? It lies very, very still and hopes it won’t happen again._

_The vehicle stops. It is carried, gently. It can hear the sounds of another motor. Identification: light aircraft. It is carried inside the aircraft. Takeoff procedures initiated. Additional straps are applied. The man says, ‘Hold tight, Buck’. Hold tight to what? Its hands are bound. Plane is airborne for approximately ninety three minutes when its vision is unencumbered. Two targets identified: blonde man with the tranquiliser gun, presumed speaker; redheaded woman pilot. Red hair causes error response: defensive impulse conflicting with positive reaction. Source of error: unknown._

***

‘Do you know who I am?’ Steve asks.

‘You shot me,’ Bucky replies in a flat tone.

‘Sorry.’

_Identified: apology. Response: unclear. Has a handler ever apologised to it before?_

‘Define mission parameters.’

‘Your mission’s over, Buck.’

‘Identified: non-standard transport procedures.’ Bucky looks like he’s struggling with something. ‘You aren’t my handler. Define mission parameters.’

‘Just do it,’ Natasha says from the pilot’s seat.

‘Ok, fine.’ Steve sighs, rubbing his face. He switches to the emotionless tone he hasn’t used in almost a decade. ‘Change to protocol. Handler transition complete. New mission parameters: subject deprogramming.’

 _Error: handler transition not according to protocol. Compatibility error: new mission parameters conflict with prime directive: Winter Soldier. Prime directive: Winter Soldier require subject programming. Compatibility error: override. Complete override: failure. Partial override: complete. Dormant mode: activated_.

Steve reaches out to touch Bucky’s face but he flinches back from the touch, fear in his eyes. Steve drops his hand, hurt. He gives Bucky a sad look and climbs into the front of the plane to sit beside Natasha.

‘How is he?’ she asks lightly.

‘Not good.’ He shakes his head. ‘I won’t know how bad it is until I’ve gotten him somewhere safe.’

‘They could have invented a lot of new techniques since they last had you. You don’t know for sure that you’ll be able to help him.’

‘Thanks, that’s really useful. I really appreciate your positive attitude.’

‘Hey, I just want you to be prepared.’ She gives him a sideways smile, the I-care-but-you’re-an-idiot one. ‘You might not be able to get things back the way they were.’

‘I know.’ He sighs deeply, rubbing his chest. ‘It hasn’t been so long that I’ve forgotten what they can do. I still feel it, in here, every day.’

He glances back at Bucky, who is sitting rigidly upright, expression blank. ‘I’ve thought about what might happen. If I can’t get him back.’

‘Oh?’ her tone is bored but he knows she’s been waiting to hear this.

‘I think I’d kill us both. I don’t know if poison would work or exposure or what, or even if I can really drown. But I’d figure it out.’ He stares directly ahead as he talks, tone steady. ‘I’m not going on without Bucky.’

‘I kind of figured you’d say that,’ she says, then, after a pause, ‘I’ll help you. If you want me to.’

‘Thanks.’ She lets him take her hand and squeeze it for a moment. Then he clambers back down the plane to Bucky.

‘How you holding up?’ he asks softly. Bucky looks confused.

‘Unclear.’ Steve chuckles without mirth.

‘Status report.’

‘Status: acceptable. No injuries. Minor discomfort and dehydration detected.’

‘I wish I could help with the discomfort, Bucky, but I can’t untie you.’ He roots around in a bag and pulls out a juice box, puts the straw in, holds it to Bucky’s lips. ‘Here.’

 _Hydration acceptable. Apple juice. Identified: pleasure. Juice box: ridiculous. Identified: embarrassment. Handler is a weirdo_.

‘Do you remember me?’ Steve asks while Bucky sucks determinedly at the straw.

‘You’re my handler.’

‘Before that. Do you remember me from before I- ah, from before I shot you?’ Bucky shakes his head slowly, looking confused.

 _Handler expression indicates displeasure. Identified: fear. Handler displeasure leads to punishment. Punishment may cause fracture, bruising, scarring. Proximity to tank unknown. Adjust physical parameters for possibility of lasting damage_.

‘Hey, it’s ok, I’m not going to hurt you,’ Steve says sadly, reaching out then dropping his hands as the look on Bucky’s face. ‘I won’t hurt you, Bucky.’

‘You shot me,’ Bucky replies cautiously.

‘Yeah, smartass, but not with bullets,’ Steve says with a sad little huff of a laugh. ‘I’m sorry I shot you. I just needed to get you away from them.’

‘Identify ‘Them’.’

‘Maybe we should get to that later.’ Steve sighs. ‘Do you want more juice?’

‘Yes,’ Bucky says, then remembers his manners. ‘Please.’

‘Very polite,’ Steve says with a wobbly smile.

 _Unable to identify handler emotions. Handler appears to be alternating between pleasure and displeasure. Identified: confusion. Identified: desired outcome: make handler smile. Predicted: handler will have a nice smile_.

They touch down at dark in the Arctic Circle. The sky is a cold mess of stars. Natasha has made hasty arrangements with a contact; they are met by two sled teams. Steve bundles Bucky up in layers of blankets, bag once again over his head, and secures him to the back of a sled. They are both wary around the dogs, but Natasha shows Steve how to command the team and they make good progress. Her contact takes the plane, and they watch it as it disappears south again.

They abandon the sled teams a few miles later. Natasha assures Steve that they know the way home. He removes the restraints from Bucky’s legs and leads him slowly. They walk through the snow for hours, enhanced bodies fighting against the cold. Steve talks to Bucky when he can, when the going is smooth enough, telling him bits and pieces about their lives. Bucky stays silent.

Finally they reach their destination: an old safe house of Natasha’s, half buried in snow but fully stocked and extremely isolated. Natasha wrestles with the generator while Steve sits Bucky in a chair and puts the restraints back on his legs.

‘Report, soldier,’ he says, sliding the bag off.

‘New identification: Bucky, alias Buck. Status: fucking cold. Location: no fucking idea.’

‘Aw, hear that? Cussing like a real boy,’ Natasha says as the generator sputters into life. Electric blue light floods the room.

The safe house is an abandoned ranger station, built from a couple of shipping containers welded end to end and lined with insulation. Natasha busies herself gathering up all the secreted weapons and locking them in a safe while Steve gets a fire going. Bucky looks at her with distrust every time she passes in front of his vision. Steve, on the other hand, he continues to regard with mild confusion, like he can’t quite place him in the scene.

‘Don’t worry, comrade,’ Natasha finally says, ‘I’m not going to be here for long.’

‘Define objectives,’ Bucky requests.

‘My objective is to stick around long enough to make sure you aren’t going to kill him,’ she says, thumbing at Steve, ‘then get back to work.’

‘Why would I kill him?’ Bucky asks suspiciously.

‘I don’t know, comrade, you tell me.’

‘What is there to eat in this place?’ Steve interrupts. ‘I’m starving.’

Natasha produces tinned soup and reindeer jerky.

‘Do you remember that time I tried to show Emma how to boil a ham?’ Steve asks Bucky around a mouthful of jerky. ‘Because this is definitely worse than that.’

_It cannot access the memory, but it has no trouble believing him. Nutrition content is high but taste and texture are suboptimal. Hard to imagine food getting worse than this._

_It remembers the sensation of a tube in its throat, liquefied food being pumped into its stomach. It remembers the sensation of a tube being forced into its rectum when it refused the tube in its mouth. It shudders violently, retching, and falls to the floor_.

‘Bucky? Hey, it’s ok, it’s alright,’ Steve murmurs, pulling Bucky back up onto the chair. He tries to stroke Bucky’s face but he flinches away from the touch. ‘I’m sorry, no touching, it’s ok.’

‘What happened?’ Natasha asks with mild amusement, which Steve knows means she is concerned.

‘Remembered… hurt,’ Bucky says in a strained voice.

‘The ham wasn’t that bad,’ Steve jokes weakly. Bucky stares blankly at him.

‘I’m going to bed,’ Natasha announces. ‘We should lie together for warmth. If he can handle it.’

Steve carries Bucky to one of the narrow beds and lays him down gently. Natasha pushes the other one across and stretches out, arm lightly touching Bucky’s arm. Steve lies down awkwardly on the other side. They huddle together in the shadows, three lost and broken things.

***

 _It lies stiff and still as it can to minimise contact. Touch is followed by pain. Pain may be the result of damage. Reduction of damage is part of mission parameters. It is unused to natural sleep but it can power down as required_.

 _Bucky opens his eyes and his body is immobile. Metal and flesh tether him. A thick flesh band crosses his chest. A face comes at him out of the dark: Steve, face flickering red and orange and shadow, and Steve is part of the chair and he is in the chair and the chair is made of flesh. He cannot move, he cannot breathe, the flesh opens up and it is his flesh and hands reach inside him and grab his intestines and unravel them slowly, pull his thick, wet insides out and he screams and closes his eyes and it opens its eyes and Steve is there and his arm is across its chest and there is a knife at its throat and someone is screaming and Steve is telling it to be quiet, to be calm, and it follows the order and the screaming stops and the knife lifts and Steve looks shaken and the redhead looks pissed and it still cannot move but it’s no longer in the chair_.

***

‘Still having nightmares, huh?’ Steve says, tired.

‘I dreamed I was Bucky,’ he replies, voice raspy.

‘Yeah?’

‘I was Bucky, and you were Steve.’

‘That’s right, Buck,’ Steve says, looking hopeful. ‘Do you remember?’

Bucky shakes his head slowly. ‘Dreams not real. Not actual memories.’

‘But that’s who you are. You’re Bucky. And I’m Steve.’ He takes Bucky’s hand. ‘You know that, deep down.’

‘I’m… Steve’s.’

‘Yeah, Buck. You’re mine. No matter what.’ He kisses Bucky’s knuckles.

‘You guys are gross,’ Natasha says, making a face. ‘I’m going to leave tomorrow, I don’t want to catch feelings.’

‘You sure?’ Steve says, eyes shining.

‘Yeah. You need your space.’

‘Thanks, Nat. that’s really good to hear.’

 _It has no idea what the hell is going on_.

Bucky has an easier time with the powdered eggs and tinned peaches that Steve carefully feeds him for breakfast. Steve wipes juice off his chin carefully and only after obtaining permission. Natasha rolls her eyes, which Steve knows means she’s touched.

He pulls a battered copy of _Red Stars and Black Stripes_ from his bag – repurchased from a second-hand store in Maine – and flicks through to the page he’s after. He sits down in front of Bucky, who regards him with a blank expression.

‘I want to show you something. It helped last time, it might help again.’ He turns the book around slowly, showing him a full-page photograph captioned ‘Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes’.

‘Bucky,’ he says quietly.

‘Yeah,’ Steve replies.

‘Good lookin’ guy,’ he says in the same quiet, flat voice.

‘Yeah, you are,’ Steve says, smiling.

‘Am I?’ he frowns disbelievingly.

‘Yeah, Bucky. You’re real handsome,’ Steve says, voice husky. ‘And don’t you know it.’

 _It has caught itself by surprise: ‘Am I?’ It supposes Bucky is an ‘I’. It tries out the taste of a new phrase: I am Bucky. The phrase is pleasing. Bucky decides it likes being and ‘I’, and, by extension, a ‘he’. He is Bucky. Bucky is Steve’s_.

‘Thanks, pal,’ he says, and Steve grins.

 _Desired outcome: achieved_.

‘Gross,’ Natasha says, shaking her head in disgust.

‘I’m going to remove the restraints now, ok Bucky?’ Steve says slowly. Bucky nods.

‘Confirm compliance.’

Natasha leans back against a bench as Bucky stands, stretches, rubs his wrist. Steve knows from familiarity and Bucky from instinct that one wrong move and she will use the bench to launch herself for attack. Steve helps him walk a few times around the room, steps shaky from immobility.

‘No plans to run howling into the night?’ Natasha asks, smirking.

‘It’s day time.’ he snorts.

‘Your boy’s thick as a brick, Steve. Good thing you’re both so pretty.’

‘I think he was making a joke.’

‘Affirmative.’

‘Ugh. You deserve each other.’

‘Affirmative.’

‘Aw, hell, Bucky…’

 _Database shows that this is a hug. Body in state of panic. Violent response undesirable: damage to self likely from redhead. Damage caused to Steve also undesirable. Steve is doing that thing with his lips on the top of Bucky’s head again. Stop that_.

‘Sorry, I know, you don’t like touching,’ Steve says.

Bucky has his metal arm on Steve’s jaw, twisting his face up and away. Natasha is leaning forward, hand in her pocket. Steve raises his hands placatingly and Bucky lowers his.

‘Sorry,’ he mumbles.

‘It’s ok,’ Steve says, but he looks sad.

 _Steve looking sad: suboptimal. Identified: wounded puppy look. Stop the wounded puppy look_.

Bucky reaches up, very slowly, and pushes the corners of Steve’s mouth up with his index fingers. He frowns deeply and takes his fingers away. Steve keeps the smile; in fact, he grows it, though it doesn’t completely reach his eyes.

‘I feel like I’m in a Hallmark card,’ Natasha groans, miming throwing up.

She leaves the next morning, as promised. Steve and Bucky take things slowly, letting Bucky relearn things a little bit at a time. They have a working radio, and Steve gets occasional news updates or missives from Natasha and, once, half an hour of a golden oldies station that made him weepy and Bucky punchy.

***

After a few months Steve is confident enough that he goes away for a day to pick up a delivery of supplies. He comes back to find Bucky perched on the roof, covered in an inch of snow. They sit in front of the fire and Bucky leans into him, shivering. Some caveats are added to the no touching rule: Bucky is allowed to kiss his face if he has his hands restrained. He is allowed to kiss back if Bucky is allowed to have a knife at his throat.

The next time he goes on a supply run he gets halfway home again before he runs into Bucky, ploughing through the snow. He reaches for his gun, thinking Bucky’s programming has somehow been activated, but before he can get it Bucky is on him. It takes a few panicked seconds before he realises it’s a hug – the first Bucky has initiated. New caveats are added: Steve is allowed to stroke Bucky’s hair, as long as Bucky can keep a gun on him. He no longer has to have his hands restrained while kissing, but he does have to sit on them.

Bucky refuses to stay behind the next time, and takes up a sniper position while Steve picks up the delivery. Steve accounts for this and requests additional supplies, making Bucky carry half back. They are both too tired to explore limits when they return, but Bucky does manage nine hours of dreamless sleep in Steve’s arms. Physical exhaustion proves an attractive method of achieving optimum sleep times, and the two of them spend more time outdoors, climbing mountains and dragging blocks of ice around and performing various other acts of one-upmanship.

***

Natasha visits once every twelve months or so, bringing treats like fresh food, trashy magazines and cassette tapes or CDs of terrible music. Bucky remembers a little more of her each time and they manage to be almost comfortable together. At the turn of the century she drags them out into the middle of the tundra and they light fireworks, marvelling at their brightness in the month-long night.

‘Here’s to surviving,’ she says, clinking their individual champagne bottles together.

‘It’s frozen,’ Bucky says mournfully, and they all laugh.

‘I’m glad I found you both again,’ she says, like it’s nothing, and they pretend they didn’t hear her, and the three of them hold hands as the wind picks up and blows the smoke away until it’s like they were never there.

***

They don’t hear from Natasha again for a couple of years, when they find a note tucked into their supply delivery that she’s going steady with someone. Steve understands the code and is glad she’s found more legitimate work.

***

_SOMEWHERE IN THE ARCTIC CIRCLE, 2011_

The radio brings them snatches of news, about Howard Stark’s son building a flying suit and conspiracies about a giant robot flattening a town in New Mexico. Then one day Bucky is fiddling with the dials and picks up a distress call.

‘—malfunction – S.O.S. – going down- -- broken – help – no tim- -- base of-‘

They just make out the name of a mountain before the signal goes dead. Steve and Bucky stare at each other in the oppressive silence that follows.

‘There’s no one else out here,’ Bucky says quietly.

‘What if it’s a trap?’

‘What if it’s not?’

‘… they’ll die.’

‘We can help them.’

‘Are you sure about this?’

‘Yeah. We’ve got a debt to pay.’ Bucky’s face is determined.

‘You know I’ve never agreed about that. We weren’t in control of what we did.’

‘Doesn’t matter. We’re going.’

Steve has never told Bucky exactly where they are, so he takes the lead. The call came from only a few miles away, and they can soon see billowing smoke.

A small aeroplane lies in the snow on its side, one wing ripped off, engine in flames. They sprint towards it, closing the distance in a few short minutes.

Bucky jumps on top of the plane, ripping off the door with his metal arm. He jumps inside, hitting the opposite wall, and clambers over the seats, looking for passengers. He drags bodies out of the wreckage, not stopping to check if they’re alive. Steve braces himself above the door and catches people as Bucky tosses them to him, tossing them in turn into the snow. The plane shudders and noxious black smoke starts pouring into the cabin.

‘Bucky! We have to go!’ Steve yells. He sees the glint of Bucky’s arm through the smoke and hears the smash as he breaks down the door to the cockpit.

A few agonising seconds go by and Bucky drags the pilot and co-pilot out of the door. They make it to safety just as the engine explodes, sending chunks of shrapnel whizzing through the air to melt holes in the snow.

‘Bucky? Are you ok?’

Bucky nods. ‘The co-pilot is dead.’

‘We got the rest of them out. We did good, ok?’

‘Yeah.’

‘Hey! Hey, you saved us!’ the pilot calls to them, then falls back in the snow, coughing violently.

‘Here,’ Steve says, taking off his jacket and putting it around her shoulders. ‘Will someone else come for you?’

She nods. ‘We’re a commercial airline, we do tours. They’ll have gotten our distress signal. But-‘ she grabs his arm, ‘we’d all be dead if you hadn’t come along. Why are you out here?’

‘Don’t tell anyone you saw us,’ Steve pleads. ‘You take the credit. Be the hero.’

‘I can’t do that.’

‘Sure you can. It’s easy.’ He smiles tightly at her and he and Bucky disappear.

***

A week later they wake up to find Natasha sitting on the dining table in a black catsuit.

‘Hey, dummies,’ she says, giving that crooked smile that means trouble.

‘What’s wrong?’ Steve asks, scrabbling to his feet.

‘Anything exciting happen while I was gone?’ She hops lightly to the floor.

‘This is about the plane,’ Bucky says flatly.

‘My fault, really,’ she says with mild annoyance. ‘I probably should have told you boys about camera phones.’

‘What the hell’s a camera phone?’ Steve asks with trepidation.

She pulls a black rectangle out of a pouch at her belt, fiddles with it, and hands it to him. Steve and Bucky watch the three minute clip: a teenager, covered in soot and blood, sobs on the screen. There’s a noise of shredding metal and the picture shakes, goes black, comes up again and there’s Bucky, metal arm clearly visible, pulling the teenager out of the plane. There’s a scuffling as he lands in the snow then the camera is on Steve and Bucky as they pull the pilots from the wreckage. Despite the soot and blood and shaky footage their faces are clearly visible as Steve tells the pilot not to tell anyone about them.

‘So that went viral pretty quickly,’ Natasha says casually. ‘Ten million views in the first day.’

‘What does that mean?’ Steve asks, hands shaking as he hands the phone back.

‘Well, the good news is, HYDRA won’t be able to touch you now.’ She tucks a loose strand of hair behind her ear.

‘And the bad news?’ Bucky asks, as the door smashes inwards and a stream of black-clad people with guns burst into the cramped space.

‘My boss wants to see you,’ Natasha calls over the din as Steve and Bucky are forced to their knees.

Their wrists are secured and bags are placed over their heads and they’re pushed through the snow to where the choppers wait, just out of super-earshot. The flight is long but they hear Natasha make sure they’re sat next to each other, and for that at least they’re grateful. They just manage to link their fingers despite the restraints.

The choppers land before they have descended and Steve assumes they must be on a mountain top, but the bags are removed from their heads and they are on a huge aircraft carrier in the sky. Rifles nudge them out of the choppers.

‘Welcome to SHIELD, boys,’ Natasha says with a smirk.

SHIELD agents pretend badly not to be watching them as they walk through the hallways. They are led deep within the helicarrier to a white room with thick walls inlaid with two-way mirrors, where they are cuffed to the table. They are left along in the room for an indeterminate amount of time. Finally, a man with an eye-patch and a long black coat enters the room, followed by Natasha. She smirks at them infuriatingly.

‘Natasha has a lot of very interesting things to say about you boys,’ the man says, sitting across from them, ‘very interesting indeed, given she declined to tell me you exist until a few days ago.’

‘We didn’t mean to cause any trouble, sir,’ Steve says.

‘’Didn’t mean to cause any trouble’,’ the man repeats. ‘That’s an interesting notion, Captain. It is still Captain, isn’t it? The Soviets didn’t promote you?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Good. Well, Captain, I’m afraid you’ve caused rather a lot of trouble, whether or not you meant to.’ He regards them with a grim expression. ‘You’ve chosen and interesting time to re-emerge.’

‘Begging your pardon, sir, but we didn’t choose any of this,’ Bucky says firmly.

‘So Natasha has told me. It’s very lucky for you that she has fully disclosed her past to me.’ He gives her a sideways look. ‘Or so I thought.’

‘What does that mean?’ Steve asks. ‘Sir.’

‘It means there’s slightly more chance of me believing whatever story you want to tell me, and slightly less chance of the two of you being brought before a firing squad.’ He pulls a phone out of his coat, fiddles with it, puts it back. ‘The Council has given provisional approval, subject to _extensive_ testing and analysis, to allow the two of you to work as SHIELD agents, under my complete authority.’

‘What sort of testing?’ Bucky asks, clenching his hands into fists.

‘Psychological, primarily,’ Natasha says with a shrug. ‘It’s a piece of cake.’

‘What’s the alternative?’ Steve regards the man coolly.

‘Prison. A very public trial, given the popularity of your little video, after which you’ll be locked in some government facility somewhere.’ He points at Steve. ‘The Cold War may be over, but don’t think this country has forgotten what you did to them. There’s still a lot of Council members who want you executed for treason.’

‘Why _not_ lock me up?’

‘Don’t know if you’ve heard, living in the ice for so long, but the world has just gotten a whole lot scarier.’ He fiddles with the phone again and one wall of the room lights up, showing footage of a man in a metal suit flying through the air, interspersed with shots of a giant robot and a man shooting lightning from a hammer. ‘The Council feels that America needs some reassurance of its place in the world. Having our country’s first superhero fighting on our side again seems like a good way towards that. That, and one of our former directors is making a lot of threats.’

‘You haven’t exactly given us much of a choice.’

‘It’s the best offer you’re going to get. And it expires in five hours.’ He gets up and leaves, Natasha following.

Someone comes in with plastic cups of water and a plastic tray of fruit. They unlock the cuffs and leave again. Steve stands and starts pacing around the room while Bucky pounces hungrily on the fruit.

‘They’ve probably got cameras on us right now,’ Steve says, looking around the room.

‘Probably,’ Bucky confirms. Steve crouches down in front of him, pressing their foreheads together.

‘HYDRA have been part of SHIELD from the beginning,’ he whispers, barely audible. ‘This isn’t a way out. We’re right back in their hands.’

‘No,’ Bucky whispers back. ‘They can’t wipe us or stick us in the tank again. This is our chance.’

‘To do what?’

‘To rip HYDRA our by the roots.’

‘Bucky…’

‘Listen to me, Steve. Natasha would never have brought us here if she knew. No, don’t look at me like that, she wouldn’t. And that man, he wouldn’t have let us on this ship if he was one of them. And that ‘former director,’ you know that’s Peggy. If no one else, do it for her.’ He kisses Steve fiercely. ‘We can do this. I promise.’

‘Ok. I trust you.’

The door opens and they spring apart. Natasha enters, looking amused. ‘You might want to tone down the necking, you just gave heart attacks to everyone on the other side of that glass.’

Steve turns pink and Bucky makes a kissy face at the glass. Natasha snorts.

‘We’ve made a decision,’ Steve says, standing and smoothing the front of his shirt fussily. ‘We’ll do it. We’ll work for SHIELD.’

She beams at them. ‘Fury will be happy. He’s trying to collect us.’

‘’Us’?’ Bucky repeats sceptically.

‘Anyone with enhanced abilities. He’s got big plans. Trying to put a team together.’

‘It’s a long time since we were part of a team,’ Steve says.

‘You’ll be great,’ she says sunnily.

***

It is a few short months before they meet the rest of Fury’s team, when an angry god destroys a SHIELD base and, subsequently, much of New York. Their HYDRA-destroying plans are temporarily put on hold as they once again become the subject of viral videos.

Then Fury reassigns them to the SHIELD Headquarters in Washington. Their missions carry an unusually high fatality rate for accompanying SHIELD field agents. There is a minor incident when Bucky comes face-to-face with Alexander Pierce and Steve has to physically stop him from caving Pierce’s head in. They are both placed on probation, then labelled unstable. An order is put out quietly to disappear them, during which time Pierce accelerates certain plans. Steve’s dormant programming is activated and he almost kills Nick Fury. Bucky has to riddle him with bullets to stop him. Sam Wilson, their new ally, gets Steve underground while Bucky, Natasha and Agent Hill take down Pierce’s plans. They escape, just. They stop HYDRA, just. They are allowed to continue working with the Avengers, just.

Stark gives them their own wing of the Avengers Tower. It is the most floor space either of them has ever had in the entirety of their very long lives. They make brief public appearances. They save the day, again and again. They sleep peacefully, most nights. They are back in the world, and they are very close to happy. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Once again I have not spent enough time editing this chapter but my fragile ego and crappy day at work means I am seeking validation. Yay!
> 
> Shoutout to Xanoka who brought up Peggy in their comments on the last chapter which made me realise she deserved another appearance. Also shoutout to whoever recced this fic to the Stucky Library on tumblr, you're an absolute ledge. 
> 
> The title of this chapter comes from Sonnet 97 by Shakespeare. Also! The name of the fic comes from a medieval English verse, which I should have mentioned earlier.


	5. Epilogue: Palingenesis

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> There are... actually no content warnings for the epilogue? A miracle.

They have a life. It is hard and violent and not entirely theirs, but they are together.

With the money they made from SHIELD and what Steve had stashed from working with Natasha, they buy a penthouse in Brooklyn. The apartment is halfway between their old houses, before they went to war (Steve’s is now condos and Bucky’s is a sneaker store). Bucky tracks down an old cast-iron bed frame and a record player. Natasha gives them an ornate quilt without saying where she got it or why, but Steve finds spiders and stars embroidered into the pattern and is touched.

They don’t get anything quite so regular as weekends but when they have a couple of days without an international incident the two and sometimes three of them go to Brooklyn. Steve paints a mural on one wall, of the New York skyline in 1940, the woods in Boulder, the Arctic mountains: places where they were happy and alone. Most old music makes Bucky twitch but he finds he does have a deep and abiding love for Ella Fitzgerald and Billie Holiday. They play their small handful of records over and over again and dance in circles around the apartment. Bucky cooks, a handful of things he remembers making in Boulder and old-fashioned roasts and weird experimental fusion dishes that Steve complains and they both fight about. Natasha always brings food, sometimes greasy takeaway and sometimes vatrushkas or pirogi which she _definitely didn’t make myself, do I look like Bolshi Betty Crocker to you, Steve?_. They lie together on the couch and eat and watch old movies and talk loudly, about nothing that matters.

Bucky and Steve send increasingly elaborate anonymous gift baskets to Emma and Dean’s old address as an awkward means of repayment. They include expensive foods, bespoke homewares from ridiculous Brooklyn boutiques, books that they’ve enjoyed, the nicest small knives that Bucky can sneak into the basket without Steve noticing. They don’t check to make sure the address is still correct; it’s a question they don’t want an answer to.

One day they are in the penthouse when the buzzer rings. Looking at each other apprehensively, Steve moves to the door and Bucky to the window. He sees the glint of red hair on the street below and gives Steve a thumbs-up. Natasha doesn’t usually ring the buzzer, but given she has already entered the apartment through every conceivable window, it seems a nice surprise.

There’s a knock on the door and Steve opens it and is immediately almost knocked over with the force of Dean’s bear hug. ‘You assholes!’ Dean shouts.

‘Unbelievable.’ Emma steps around them, shaking her head. ‘After all we did for you.’

Bucky, heart pounding from seeing Steve attacked, re-sheathes his knife. ‘Hey.’

‘’Hey’?’ she repeats with an amused look. ‘Is that all you have to say for yourself?’

‘How did you find us?’ Steve asks, finally released from Dean’s grip. He rubs his chest with a wince.

‘Elijah tracked you down from the hamper delivery company.’ Dean claps him on the shoulder. ‘A fine bit of detective work, especially from a retiree.’

‘You might have sent a letter.’ Emma scowls at them both. ‘We only figured out it was you two because of all the knives.’

Steve glares at Bucky, who looks innocently at the ceiling.

‘We’re glad to see you both together. We thought…’ Dean shakes his head. ‘We thought a lot of things. But then a few years back there was that incident in New York… well, we were upset you didn’t call us, but we were glad to see you both looking ok.’

‘Jill’s head just about exploded,’ Emma says with a laugh.

‘It’s good to see you both. Really.’ Steve grins. ‘We’ve missed you.’

Emma moves to hug Bucky and he flinches away. Her face falls and he mumbles an apology. ‘I suppose you had good reason for keeping your distance,’ she says quietly.

‘We were afraid that they’d have found you,’ Steve murmurs. ‘If you’d been killed because of us…’

‘Well we are fighting fit, and we’re taking you to dinner,’ Dean says sternly. ‘No ifs, ands or buts.’

Their life expands again: there are trips to Colorado, to visit old friends. It is a great joy to have old friends as well as new. Dean and Emma visit New York sometimes too, and on one especially good trip they go to Avengers Tower and Emma manages to make Tony speechless for 1.35 minutes.

They can’t get away as much as they like and sometimes when they are recognised in public they are spat on. They are still on indefinite probation, and there are weights and measures for every action they take on every mission. The battles they fight are impossible and they are at war with the world and sometimes with their friends. Still, they have each other, sleeping each night with Bucky’s metal hand wrapped it Steve’s flesh one, and sometimes Natasha between them. They are together, and they remember, and the years go on and on.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all so much for reading! I've really enjoyed writing this story and I'm really proud of it. Also: it is part of a series! There will be a few one shots appearing which take place in this au, and maybe longer things, idk. 
> 
> Thanks again, I hope you've enjoyed it <3


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